Over on Twitter yesterday, Jonny (a philosophy of science postgrad) asked, "Suppose I have 10 letters of recommendation for PhDs, how do I determine whose to use?" Someone suggested we hold a thread on this here, so here goes!
First of all, congrats to Jonny on securing 10 letters. That might be an all-time record! In response, Craig Agule wrote: "Although this advice is not wholly uncontroversial, you should have some trusted advisor read all 10 letters, both to catch accidentally bad letters and to help you choose." Although I've never tried it, this is what I've been told before–and I've heard if you have your letters uploaded to Interfolio, you can have them sent to a trusted advisor (though I wonder if there are some ethical issues here, given that letters are intended to be confidential).
In any case, I guess my own answer is a bit more complex. I think if it's possible to get a trusted person to vet your letters, that's a good way to go. But I also think some strategy is probably in order for selecting the best letters. First, when it comes to jobs at R1's and prestigious SLACs, I suspect name recognition may matter a lot. If you have some letters from really eminent people in the profession, my sense is that (all things being equal) those are probably ones to prioritize. Conversely, if you are applying to jobs at a "teaching" school, it is not at all clear to me that the same strategy is wise. In my experience, prestigious letter-writers tend to write research-heavy letters–ones that may make a candidate look like a bad fit for a teaching school (conveying in effect, "this person really belongs at an R1"). When applying to teaching schools, one should always include at least one "teaching letter", and I think one should try to figure out which of one's letters make one look balanced (i.e. both a good researcher and a good teacher). Finally, I think that whenever possible, it is good to include at least one "outside" letter by a person not from one's grad department, as everyone recognizes that faculty from your grad program have a vested interest in your success (and hence reasons to "oversell" you relative to someone who has no such vested interest.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. I have to confess that this is a problem I never really solved as a job-marketeer. I had seven letters, never had anyone vet them, and just decided on a case to case basis which ones seemed to best fit the jobs I was applying to (most of the time, my experience is that jobs have a three-letter cutoff). This probably wasn't the best solution, but it worked okay! I suspect this may be in part because (or so I've heard) search committee members these days often take recommendation letters with a real grain of salt, focusing more on judging your materials for themselves. As a four-time search-committee member myself, I can attest to this. When a candidate's letters don't match your own estimation of their materials at all (viz. "overselling" the candidate), I suspect the tendency is to go with one's own judgment. But again, this is just my guess, and I could be totally wrong!
What do you all think? It might be particularly good to hear from candidates who have grappled with this problem effectively, as well as from search committee members!
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