Old letters or recommendation

[dandelionsroar]

Hi, I was wondering if it is acceptable to use a letter of recommendation written a year ago or if it is frowned upon and needs to be dated within a few months of my application? I asked for the majority of my lor's last year and don't want to bug my professors again since I know they are busy this time of year.

Thanks in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

dandelion,

A year-old letter of recommendation is not too old at all. If something has occurred in the interim that you'd like a letter-writer to consider, you may ask for another one, but if the letter-writer included all the relevant information about your suitability for admission in the earlier letter, that's fine. Just to use an example, in my case, I was out of undergrad for a year before applying to law school. My letters were from undergrad professors. Thus, the knowledge about me they were using to write the letters was at least a year old anyway! One year is not a big difference.

Robert Carroll