What should I do if I had a good relationship with a professor and was hoping to get a letter of recommendation from them, but then they sadly passed away?
hello,
i’m really sorry to hear that and hope you’re doing alright. as for the letter of recommendation, i think the obvious answer is that you have to ask someone else to write it, unless you’ve already asked this prof and they’ve already written and sent your letter (in which case i suppose it’d still be valid), or they’re writing letters for you from the grave (the commitment!).
i know it’s tough to have to scramble to put together things like this, but at the same time, assuming you’d left a good amount of time to ask your former prof for the letter, you can hopefully manage to find someone else to write a letter for you by the deadline.
i’m sure you’ve heard how important it is to ask profs early on so that they have time to respond and write your letter. ideally, you’d ask another prof who you have a great relationship with, but if that doesn’t pan out, i’d say a good choice would be to reach out to profs who have supervised you in some capacity e.g. for a research course, work-study, etc. second to that would be profs who taught you in a courses where you got good grades, hopefully participated a good amount in, and are related to the field you want to go into.
i’d also consider the prof’s approachability. i’ve met profs who were really student-centred and would go to great lengths to help and seemed to always have the students’ best interests in mind, always willing to give extra support or one-on-one meetings even when i didn’t participate a whole lot or wasn’t very close to them. on the other hand, some profs just seem to be less personable, or less available to give extra help to students – either they’re too busy, or the class is too big, and they don’t seem to offer a lot of time outside of class – that could be a red flag for finding good referees, which requires a good amount of time and energy commitment.
above all, i’d recommend emailing profs (or if appropriate, talking to them in person) as soon as possible. give them the key details, like your name, when you took their course (and which course), the programs you’re applying to, deadlines, and you can attach your transcript and CV as well, to save them the trouble of having to ask for more info if they need it.
if you’re tight on time, it’s best to email multiple profs (say, 3-4, or more if you really want), just in case some don’t respond. even if you suspect that some of their references may be more lukewarm, it’s better to ask just in case your other options fall through. a mediocre reference letter is still better than none.
as a side note, most of this advice is based on grad school applications, or applications in academia, but references for professional schools like med school or law school may differ. from what i’ve heard, letters from profs are a must in academia, while for professional schools the status of the referee may not matter as much as the content of your letter, in other words, a glowing review from a different supervisor/mentor figure, even if it’s not from a prof, could still be very beneficial to your application.
or maybe you need the letter of recommendation for a job (actually, now that i think about it you haven’t really said much about what the letter is for…) or volunteering or something, in which case it might be even easier to find a different reference that’ll do the job. profs are notoriously hard to reach sometimes so if you can even bypass asking them for a reference and go with a different referee instead, that might work too.
good luck!
aska