How Important are LORs?

[YoungEconomist]

Many times on this forum, people will state that the LORs are very important. But how important are they? I mean, they're just one factor among many, so why should we assume they matter more than test scores or grades (especially grades in a class like Real Analysis)?

The reason I am asking is because I honestly don't know how strong my LORs will be. Two of the professors really don't know me that well (I had 2 classes with one, and one class with the other). Furthermore, the guy I took 2 classes from was awhile ago, and I know I've matured intellectually since I've taken his class (mainly as a result of taking more math classes). I got a 3.7 in both his classes, but if I took those classes these days, I probably would've gotten even better grades.

It seems that adcoms will have to take these things into account. Put differently, they'll have to realize that your letter writers may not know you that well, or that maybe you're even more prepared now then when the letter writer had you in his/her class. Furthermore, a letter writer often just observes your performance in 1 or 2 classes, but adcoms can look at your transcript and see your performance in all classes (thus, letter writers may have a skewed view of how good or bad you are as a student overall).

Furthermore, when you go to a large well known state school, it's likely that your professors won't know you as well (they teach less classes, teach bigger classes, have TAs help more, etc). Furthermore, some students are just not that good at getting to know faculty. Not to mention, there's likely to be more competition at such a school. In other words, it's generally more difficult to be the best student in a class when you have large classes of people (many of which have ambitious grad school plans in all sorts of competitive fields). I'm adding this because most school have that form you fill out which states to rank the student compared to other students.

It just seems like there's so much more to a person's profile than LORs, and I would think that LORs would carry less weight than many of the other things, and I'd like to hear other TMers opinions on the topic.

[vanRijn]

Your remark about LORs makes lots of sense.
However, I think that the more the applicant comes from a background which is unfamiliar to the adcom, the more the LORs have weight. Based on my experience with past outcomes, I would say that, at least for internationals, LORs are probably the single most important factor to get you in a program (given of course that gre/grades dont keep you out).

[Golden Rule]

Your application is only as strong as the evidence you present to the admissions committee. LORs allow you to distinguish yourself from other applicants in a way that test scores and grades can't. Maybe good grades alone will be enough to get into a decent school, but it gets harder as you climb the rankings. Ideally you need to be proactive in getting to know your professors, go to office hours and what not, do a thesis or RA to get to know them better, and convince them that you're capable of doing independent research, and allow them to compare you to other students who've had successful PhD study. I don't mean to be cruel, but ad coms do not care about your excuses for failing to get to know your professors. Put another way, anyone can make excuses, so you can't distinguish yourself with excuses.

Sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but take solace in that (1) you still have some time to get to know your professors and (2) with decent grades you'll probably get into a good enough place that'll serve your career goals well.

Also, I'd add that I generally agree with everything that you and Tatonnement discussed in this thread: http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-econo...on-time-6.html (Question time)

[pevdoki1]

They are probably quite important, but I got 2/3 of my letters from math professors who I didn't know before the semester I was applying to grad school. So draw your own conclusions..