Letter of recommendations

[roheart]

So, I am in a bit of pickle regarding recommendations.

For couple schools that I've applied to, their deadlines are approaching in two days.

A day a ago, I sent a reminder to one of the recommenders, and the recommender commented that he is not comfortable with using third party application system that most schools use.

Also, he wanted whatever info they had about him erased.

 

I assumed that he thought that I had provided such info to the third party by direct communication. So, I sent message explaining the whole process and what schools wanted from me regarding recommenders' info.

And I provided him with alternative methods.

This morning, I emailed a friendly reminder about deadlines and got an answer back pretty much saying that the recommender was busy and did not understand how such a short time was given for writing it. Also, he mentioned that he had gotten emails from school only couple days ago, which is not true since he did receive the reminder email (the actual request messages were sent by schools end of Nov).

The problem here was that the recommender was actually reminded of the deadlines about 2 weeks ago, and, also, deadlines were sent in organized format.

So, I thought that he had forgotten about it.

 

Then, I emailed the recommender saying that I was not aware of the email glitch and that I was frustrated about the fact that all that work was tossed up by a minor email glitch.

And I told him that if his time does not allow that I will just move on and it will ok.

and I thanked him.

 

Then, I got an answer back... and this one really surprised me.

The recommender said it's going to get done and said not to email him for a couple of days.

 

 

Now, I do not quite understand what happened with all this and at what point I might have pissed the recommender off.

Any..comments for remedies?

Edited December 14, 2014 by roheart

[XanthusARES]

First of all let me say that sucks. That's a total **** move on his part. So I think that there are a few options that you have. The first is that there is always the possibility that he will actually do them. In that case, all you can do is sit back and hope that they get in. Schools are somewhat more lenient with recs than they are with the rest of your application, so you should be fine even if they are a little late.

 

Your second option is to go into scramble mode. Try and find someone real quick who could fill them out for you. This is obviously not ideal because you had planned to have this guy do them, but it's better than nothing. Perhaps if you can find someone tomorrow you can get them in. If your other two are really solid, you should be ok. I think that you'll find a lot of us on here had 1 or 2 really great letters, and a 3rd that was just OK (I'm sure some of us had 3 great ones).

 

It's going to be a stressful few days for you and I'm truly sorry about that. This period in your life is already stress filled. My advice is to try and find someone else, all the while hoping the guy who said he would do it, does it. Good luck.

[YaSvoboden]

Relax. He will get the letters in. It isn't a problem that they don't meet the deadline. Seriously, I got admitted somewhere before my third letter was in.

 

My guess is that in a few months you will realize how stressed you have been and maybe you are emailing the recommender a lot. This is a busy time for professors too with finals and everything. Everything will be OK.

[Sheetrockero]

I feel your pain! This is by far my least favorite part of the whole application process. I feel like such a nag. I currently have 0/14 totally complete applications because one of my recommenders had technical issues with a couple of schools (naturally the ones with the earliest deadlines) and another seems to be waiting to the very last day for each app. I do have one recommender (by far my strongest LOR luckily) that sent out all the LORs within about a week of me sending the requests. Of course, I still need to get him to fill out one more LOR for a school I added after sending out my initial "final" list of schools and notification e-mails.

[evergreen]

I agree with YaSvoboden

All of my letters got to the schools 2 weeks after all the deadlines (in some cases almost a month late).

I still got in to places.

Schools understand that the letters part can be a bit beyond your control.