Academic letters of recommendation

[monkeypants]

Hello academic-type lpters,

I am seriously considering returning to school.  This would be for a second master's degree in a different field than the one in which I currently work.  Now, it's been 15 years since I graduated and I have maintained zero communication with the professors from my program.  As far as letters of recommendation go, it seems that schools want at least one to be from a person who knows you in an academic setting.  Given my situation, my question is this;

1) Will not having a recommendation from an academic hurt my chances of getting accepted and

2) If the answer to 1) is "yes", then how weird is it to contact a professor (even one you TA'd for) after 15 years of silence?

Personally I am *very* uncomfortable contacting someone after that long a time span.  It seems rude almost, and at any rate that guy would know the me of 15 years ago and not the person I am today.  (Although, to be sure, I was a good student and those professors were happy to references for me when I was looking for work.)  I'd much prefer to get letters form my work supervisors, but I just wanted to be sure that wasn't going to be detrimental to my application.  Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[elpollodiablo]

Likely they won't remember you, and if they do, they won't feel comfortable writing you a letter unless you made an *incredible* impression on them.

My wife is sort of going through this same thing right now, albeit after a lag of only about six years. Still, it's tough. Your options are largely limited to either A) communicating eloquently in your application materials that you've been out of school for a long time and thus have a different kind of application to present, or B) taking some post-bacc or elective classes at a local university and trying to forge some relationships and make some impressions. As the second option is going to be time-consuming and expensive, I think you just need to work on making it clear in your SOP why you don't have any valid or current academic references.

[dieblucasdie]

Depending on the program and the school, it might be that letters of recommendation are very important (for some disciplines, it might even be the only real way to evaluate you apart from grades), or it might be that letters of recommendation are a total formality, and they only actually look at your GRE scores, your writing sample, or whatever.  Explain the situation in your application, or, if there's an admissions@whatever.edu address on the application materials, you could email them in advance.  

That said, I'd also encourage you to contact your professors, even though it's been 15 years.  Trust me, they get requests for these things all the time; no one is going to think less of you for asking.  Worst case scenario is they say no.  You lose nothing by firing off a couple emails.  It's a little skeevy, but who cares, gotta get that paper.

I had a long lag time between undergrad and grad, but thankfully I'd kept sealed letters of recommendation on file.  I'd really, really encourage undergrads to do this.

[ellaguru]

If you're thinking of undergrad recommendations, I agree with pollo that they're unlikely to remember you. If it's graduate work, though, you can jog their memory if you provide them with enough material. I got my letters ten years later, and they successfully got me in, but those were PhD. courses, one from me ex-advisor, and another who considered my work "brilliant but misguided" (it's amusing to read your own reference letters) - which I guess speaks to pollo's making an impression bit.

Your advisor from your last grad program will remember you, at any rate, but the more information you can provide them with - grades, comments if you have them (I think I still have all my grad school papers, but I am likely a freak in that regard) - the better off you'll be, because the letter will be less vague and general.

[monkeypants]

Thanks for the input.  I still haven't quite decided what I'm going to do, as pollo's first sentence pretty much summarizes my feelings on the matter.  I've also got to take the GRE this weekend, which is going to be an unmitigated disaster because I can't do math.  Ask me how many times I've had to solve an equation in the last 15 years.  Or really use anything other than simple addition and subtraction.  That shit is for the birds.  And by "birds" I mean "people smarter than me."   Luckily, two of the schools I'm going to apply to don't require it.  

[auto-da-fey]

hey monkeypants, I asked a friend of mine who's a DGA. She says circumstances like yours can cancel out the need for a formally academic letter, but that in such circumstances the GRE does rise in relative significance.

Now, this is a relatively-open-admissions humanities program, so I would think the scales tip in differing directions depending on the nature of the program. For a more competitive/research-oriented humanities program, academic letters will be crucial; for a professional program where your background is more common and recognized/understood, I can't imagine they'd randomly fetishize academic letters from mentors 15 years in the rearview if you've got good and current ones from practicing in your field.

The really crucial thing is to contact directly the DGAs at your target programs and lay out the circumstances to get their feedback; unless they're assholes or these are uber-competitive programs where recruitment is never an issue, they should be really useful sources of information and guidance. One thing people don't generally realize is how hard grad progams work to attract and retain students, so this sort of groundwork-laying is often mutually beneficial.

[monkeypants]

Hey, I'm not sure if anybody gives a damn about this at this point, but in case you know someone in a similar situation - or you happen to yourself  be in a similar situation - I just thought I'd let you know how it worked out.  I was just accepted into my first-choice school yesterday.  I did not, in the end, ask for a letter from a professor.  15 years was just too long.  I went with 3 work supervisors.   My GRE score was by no means spectacular so I don't think that had much influence.  I did speak with someone in the department beforehand and in response to my inquiry was told that if I couldn't get one from an academic then an alternative was fine.  I felt it was maybe implied that an academic one was still preferable but maybe that was just me being overly sensitive to the matter.  I haven't heard from the other 3 schools I applied to yet, but obviously those aren't of much concern to me at this point.  Anyway, just wanted to let anyone who was curious know that, in my case at least, not having an academic letter wasn't a barrier to acceptance, and thanks for y'all's input.   (I think I'm gonna post a follow-up in the uncertainty  thread in a few minutes because I'm feelin' kinda emo.)

[Antero]

Congrats, yo!

[Bernard]

Congratulations!

[monkeypants]

Thanks!

[elpollodiablo]

Good work, monkey! Your story gives me hope