Failing to obtain strong letters of recommendation is a very serious black mark against your application. It can suggest that either you aren't a strong candidate, or that you aren't good at identifying and working with mentors. Both are bad signs for graduate school.
I would imagine, though I don't know for sure, that schools are somewhat understanding of less personal letters for students who attended large universities where virtually all courses are lectures. To the extent that universities in some countries provide fewer opportunities for undergraduates to develop relationships with advisors, schools that have experience with previous applicants from those countries/universities may also be more flexible in standards for
LORs. But the bottom line is that strong
LORs are very important.
Quote:
Originally Posted by economics
i've never heard of "requirements" for a phd program. there are no formal reqs. the only decisive condition ("requirement") for admission into a phd program are your LORs. i think that the top10 programs don't really check your transcript but first read your letters. for a master's degree, however, your grades will matter more, as it's not research-oriented. grades don't make you a good researcher, LORS evaluate that aspect. TM focuses on grades and courses, because that's the only advice they can give you - we can't recommend you to impress a professor as professors evaluate you automatically, so TM is obsessed with trying to quantify profiles... |
economics is right in her conclusion that TM tends to over-emphasize easily measured parts of the profile, like GPA and GRE scores. However, the initial claim that there "are no formal reqs." is incorrect. Many schools are explicit about minimum GPA and GRE scores that are either
required or
strongly suggested. (I'd also be surprised if any self-respecting economists made it a policy to initially ignore a cheap signal -- the transcript/GPA -- in favor of a more costly monitoring device --
LORs. That's just backwards. The transcript and other summary statistics provide a logical starting point that I doubt busy economists ignore.)