LORs and adcoms

[qu-mu]

can adcoms imagine a situation where a good applicant who can meet most or all of the other requirements, but has poor LORs...(even though the applicant has done all that you expect in order to get good LORs...i.e. not applicant's fault)?

[applicant12]

My 2 cents:

Look the fact that your professors or whoever you asked to write LORs don't want to write you good letters are because they don't think you have what it takes to succeed at that high level. No matter how good your grade is, if a person who has done a PhD program and has experienced how tough it is doesn't think you can succeed, then the adcoms would think that you probably can't. And I think adcoms believe PhDs people more than they believe you (or your grade)

[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]

Originally Posted by qu-mu

has poor LORs...(even though the applicant has done all that you expect in order to get good LORs...i.e. not applicant's fault)?

i don't know that means. you mean you don't have professors at your university? this is about signaling - not ahving a professor support you can either mean that you've been a student that's not promising (bad student) OR that your program didn't have opportunities to get to know profs (which is why LSE is a bad investment).

in the latter case, you become a risky applicant for a phd program, which is a huge disadvantage. chances are you are hiding behind the second scenario to hide the first one...

[asquare]

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.

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.)

[rogueeconomist]

Do bear in mind that writers of letters of reference know how the game is played and they may be willing to change what they write based on where you apply.

For example, they might write a far stronger letter to a poorly ranked program, because they don't want to lie to their friends in a top ranked program and pretend you are good, but they have no problem with passing you off as good to others. (This happens on the job market as well)

Hence the importance of asking letter writers what category of institution you should apply to and if they can strongly support you to that category.

Of course, if your letter writers completely don't care about you at all, then the above is moot. It is only relevant if they care, but they still think you're not a strong candidate. Then they might be quite willing to help you get to some category of program that you are a good match for.

Writing a falsely strong letter only has a cost when the letter writer cares about their reputation with the recipients. Hence I think many letter writers have a generic perfectly nice letter for use for the private sector, etc (where they typically don't care what use you put it to) but worry more about telling the truth if you apply to their own PhD granting institution.