Medase Posted July 21, 2019 Report Share Posted July 21, 2019 How ill-advised is to have all your 3 OMSAS referees be from your academic and work places? My three referees are 1) 4th year thesis supervisor 2) Professor that I TA'd with and attended class 3) clinical research work supervisor at hospital (maybe) Should this be good or should I replace one of them with a referee based on my ECs/personal hobbies/advocacy initiatives? (although they will know me less than my selected 3?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pyridoxal-phosphate Posted July 21, 2019 Report Share Posted July 21, 2019 . PotatoPotato 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striders02 Posted July 22, 2019 Report Share Posted July 22, 2019 I think reference letters should speak to your overall quality as a candidate. There are some traits relevant to one's candidacy that are unlikely to be displayed in academic enivronmnents (e.g. U of T's 'advocate' cluster; so, things like community service, compassion, advocacy). It's definitely possible that academic referees could speak to these qualities, but it's easier to see how these qualities would come up during ECs involving community service or something along those lines. Personally, I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of 'reference letter quality' to have a good breadth of competencies covered in my references. Especially because even if you switch one reference to an EC role, you still have 2 solid academic references - would the 3rd academic reference really have said that much that the other two haven't already covered? That said, that's just my two cents. Additionally, trading off reference letter quality for breadth is only a good idea up to a point- if the EC reference would be a lot weaker then perhaps the tradeoff isn't worth it. It's a tough call, but I'd lean towards diversifying your references unless the non-academic reference would truly be a lot weaker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matty66 Posted July 24, 2019 Report Share Posted July 24, 2019 I personally only had 1 academic LOR and the other 2 were professional/personal LORs. I would advise that you have at least one writer that knows you well enough to comment on certain personality traits. Just make sure you can cover personal/professional/academic traits through all 3 references. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anonymouspls Posted July 25, 2019 Report Share Posted July 25, 2019 I had 3 academic (profs) LORs, had no problems for Western. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.