Referee Advice Needed Urgently

[reation]

So I am facing confusion over who to choose as my reference. Last cycle, I ended up choosing the following:

 

Organizational, Management and Leadership Skills  - A professor and Academic Advisor of the department who has known me for about 4 years and is familiar with my volunteer/work/EC history. I chose her because I was the President of the club I founded at my university for about 3 years and didn't really have anyone over me as a supervisor and I felt that my club experience should've been mentioned in this area. She spoke of those traits on behalf of her knowledge of me and my activities. She cited my club variously along with other examples from my resume. I scored in the 78th percentile in this category last year.

 

 

• Commitment to Communities and Advocacy

 

• Interpersonal Behaviours and Collaboration - I used a professor for this as well who directly taught me classes on interpersonal behaviour and collaboration - I didn't score well in this category (55th percentile).

 

I decided to change the reference for collaboration this year and putting down a reference from work instead to improve.

However, I am very confused about the Manager reference. Should I keep the same reference or try to use someone else who can directly speak of the role played under their supervision, etc?

 

 

Any help and insight would be greatly appreciated.
 

[Alphalima]

Hi,

 

Although it changes every year, based on who ends up looking at your file and references, 78th percentile seems pretty good to me. Why fix something that isn't necessarily broken? I would suggest that you pick people that know you pretty well in a professional setting and can speak well of the traits that you select them to speak about.

 

In the end I think it really depends on if you think the new referee can speak better of your manager/leadership traits that the previous one. I don't think anyone else here would know more than you would in this case.

[reation]

You're very right about this. Who looks at my application will change from year to year. However, considering my good score from last year I had decided to keep the same reference but I was listening to Dr. Walker's podcast and he mentioned not to include someone (well he was talking about family and friends) who says "oh, I have known her for years and I know about her activities" - even though the context is entirely different (family/friends) but I'm still worried that because my professor/academic advisor DID NOT directly supervise my activity - it may hurt my score.

 

[doc123]

You're very right about this. Who looks at my application will change from year to year. However, considering my good score from last year I had decided to keep the same reference but I was listening to Dr. Walker's podcast and he mentioned not to include someone (well he was talking about family and friends) who says "oh, I have known her for years and I know about her activities" - even though the context is entirely different (family/friends) but I'm still worried that because my professor/academic advisor DID NOT directly supervise my activity - it may hurt my score.

 

 

 

If I may put in my two cents...from personal experience, I have found that the content of the letter matters far more than the prestige of the person who writes it. I do not think the reviewers really care if it is a professor who comments on your involvement versus someone with less qualifications. I scored in 98th percentlie for manager last year as compared to 60th the year before. Instead of asking a professor who had limited time to write a good letter, I asked my direct supervisor. He was a post-doc. He was able to comment on my skills to manage my time and lab resources.

 

I am not sure if it helps your case, just thought I'd share it. Good luck!