Tuesday, March 18, 2008

HELP

I have applied to grad school this fall. The biggest problem for me has been the whole reference thing. I went to U of T, and while Id say my marks are pretty good, I didnt really get to know any of my profs, and they didnt really get to know me either. So anyway, I decided on these two - lets call them A and B. Prof A is totally great, gets back to me within the hour, no problem. Prof B is more troublesome. I sent my first email to B on Jan 13 2008. I still hadnt heard back from him on Jan 17 so I sent him a reminder email. Still nothing the next day so I went down to his office. He was really nice, said he had so many emails he hadnt gotten to mine yet, and enthusiastically agreed to be my referee. Great. Fast forward 6 weeks to Mar 02 2008. Ive handed everything in, and the institution sends an email to Profs A and B to email in my reference. Prof A submits his reference on Mar 04 2008. No word from Prof B. On Mar 06 2008 I sent an email to Prof B asking if he had got the email from the institution. He sends back a 3 word reply saying "Yes I have". Mar 17, 2008 and the reference STILL HASNT BEEN HANDED IN. Im totally panicking because clearly this is time sensitive so last night, Mar 17, 2008 I sent him a reminder email and still nothing. Please comment and tell me what to do because I am seriously losing it.

2 Comments:

Blogger Jennifer said...

Dude, i don't know. that sucks! prof guy obviously sucks but if you keep nagging him he's not gonna want to write a good reference. then again, maybe he won't even do it at all at this point, what is wrong with him? i would just leave it and hope for the best. but fuck, that really sucks.

5:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dude, that blows. Writing references for students is part of the prof's job, and I don't think sending him a reminder email after almost 2 weeks have passed isn't unreasonable at all.

He kind of sounds like a flake though. And if you had more luck with him in person, I'd say if you don't hear back from him soon, I'd stop by his office and be like "I just wanted to make sure you got my email and is there anything else you need from me to get that reference in?"

Most of the time schools understand that you can't control professors; I definitely had one reference come in late for one school I applied to, and I still wound up getting in and getting a scholarship offer.

Applying to grad school is the most stressful thing ever; I hope everything works out okay.

1:30 PM  

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