#11: Recommendations

Ask for your letters of recommendation in the summer before the fall deadline. Depending on where you live, it really can take months to acquire them. I emailed a previous professor in August and didn’t hear back from her for two months. Finally, I learned that she was on sabbatical and not checking her email. I had to call her overseas on her mobile, interrupting a children’s birthday party, to ask her to write my recs! She sent them out soon after, but they were promptly lost by the UK postal service, unbeknownst to me. I waited for another month, and finally got a hold of her again to send me duplicates. I received the letters two days before my first deadline. The motto of my story is: Request your letters in June! Better to have them sitting safely on a shelf somewhere so that you don’t have a panic attack later.