73: Help! I have too many letter recommenders, what do I do?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Hi, everyone. I'm doing a quick little Q&A episode. It's a bonus episode, so surprise. You might not have known that this was coming. I'm gonna try to record a few more short bonus episodes from here on out. I'm going to aim for every week, but it might not be every week, depending on the questions that come in. There might be some weeks I don't get questions. Maybe every week, maybe every other week. But either way, it'll just show up on your feed. So make sure that if you are listening to me, that you've subscribed on Spotify, or Apple podcasts, or whatever app or computer system that you use to listen to my podcast.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

All right, today's question is all about letters of recommendation. The question is something along the lines of, can I have too many letters of recommendation? Typically, I get the opposite question- help! I don't have enough recommenders. How do I make sure that I secure three letters of rec? But if you have the opposite problem, can you actually have too many letters of rec? What happens if you not just have three recommenders, but you actually have four or five people. And all of them- you have that really great problem where all of them are excited and looking forward to writing you a letter of recommendation. What do you do, then?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I'll tell you what I've told my students before, and I'll tell you how I've been involved in this matter in the past. I have written several letters of recommendation for people in my position with the McNair program. Even prior to that, I wrote letters of rec as a grad student, you know, when I was a TA for certain students, and would cosign with the professor. And I would always, especially as a staff member now, because I'm not an instructor, I'm not a professor. I would always tell students, I'd be happy to write you a letter. But I would prefer to be your fourth recommender.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

What does that mean? That means that they secure three letters of rec, ideally from professors in their discipline, or in the discipline that they're going to be applying into grad school. Then I'd be that fourth one, that extra letter. I can write about how I know them personally, and write a very strong letter all about how I know them as a student, and how I know them personally, and the growth that I've seen in them over time. By being a fourth letter writer, that means that the student would then have to reach out to all of the programs that they're applying to, to ask if they would even accept an extra letter.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Sometimes you can actually figure that out relatively fast, because if you log into the application portals- and keep in mind, most application portals will be up and running by September 1st. So you can go in, login, and see. There should be a tab or a link for the letter of recommendation section. And typically, they ask you for the email, or the emails of each of your recommenders. So you can see, there might only be three spots. Or maybe they have four or five spots for you to input emails. If you can put more than three, that means that they're allowing you to submit more than three letters.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But again, it doesn't hurt to reach out. I recommend contacting the staff person from that department, the graduate advisor, and asking them directly if they accept more than three letters of recommendation. If so, you can say, I actually have five recommenders who would like to submit letters. Would it be okay for me to submit two additional letters? They might say yes. They might say no, we're only accepting three and that's it. We don't want to look at anything else. We don't want supplemental materials. You always want to make sure that you're applying and giving the programs what they want.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

That's my advice for that situation. Can you have too many letters of recommendation? Maybe, but it doesn't hurt. It can only help you to have that fourth or even a fifth recommender. Especially a fourth letter, because I'll tell you there's been so many times that I have students come up to me at the last minute saying, professor so and so still hasn't submitted their letter. Do you think you can submit your letter?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And I would much rather receive that information well in advance and not have to submit something at the last minute, hours before a deadline. I'm not a fan of that. So if the student already knew in advance that they could submit four or five letters and then I had the same amount of time as every other recommender. We all turn them in by the deadline, then you're good. Or maybe one person forgets, and you had four recommenders- you still have three. Your application is still considered complete. I hope that makes sense.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So help! I have too many recommenders. What do I do now? What you do is you contact your programs, find out if you can submit extra letters. For those that do allow extra letters, go ahead and have that fourth or fifth recommender. And for those that don't, determine which professors are going to write all the letters and which ones are just going to write for the programs that allow extra letters. All right, I hope you found that helpful, and I will talk to you all later.