How many recommendation letters should I ask my professor to write?
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009I am planning on applying to grad school and need letters of recommendations. I don’t want to overwhelm my professor with a bunch of letters of recommendation so I wanted to know what is an "average" amount of letters of recommendation for one professor to write. I’m initially thinking around 3-4 letters per professor?
I mean: I want to apply to 4 different graduate schools. And each graduate school requires 3 letters of recommendations. So is it ok to ask a professor to write a letter of recommendation for me for all 4 colleges? Or is 4 too many, or does it not matter? Thanks
Hi, first off, good for you if your marks are such that you are anticipating doing graduate work. Next, don’t worry too much about this. We do letters of recommendation for our students all the time and the vast majority of us consider this to be a proper part of our job. Also, once we write a letter for a student, customizing it for multiple destinations doesn’t take much more work. But 3 or 4 should be the max to ask someone to write for a quite different reasons. We expect a student to do their homework and decide carefully where they want to do graduate studies. So if you are just sending out applications scatter-gun that actually raises a red flag. The great majority of students for whom I have written letters are applying to ONE program. Two is okay, three acceptable, four is pushing the limit.
Good luck.