When browsing their web sites, I noticed that apart from those listed academic requirements by different universities, they all require at least two reference letters from applicants, but they did not officially state that who should write those recommendation letters.
Although I have collected several recommendation letters from my former teachers, I found it was quite hard to reach my former teachers whom I had not contacted for many years.
It almost took me two months from the day I sent out my first email to the day I got enough recommendation letters from my former teachers.
It has been puzzling me why the recommendation letters should be written by school lecturers or professors.
The people who know you best are business partners, your close friends, family members like your parents, siblings, why they are not qualified to write the recommendation letters for me?
Answer
I myself applied to graduate school quite a few years after getting my B.S. It was not easy to get recommendations from faculty who had taught me, as they had mostly retired and some had in fact died over the years. I did get one academic recommendation, but the professor admitted to me that he did not remember me and had to write his letter more or less based only on my transcript.
In my opinion, a good admissions committee should realize that situations like these occur, and be flexible about what sorts of letters they require. (I was fortunate that the admissions committee where I was applying was flexible and I did get admitted.)
That said, I would consider a lack of academic recommendations for someone who has recently been in school to be a red flag. Someone who is applying to grad school should have been a good enough student as an undergrad to have made a positive impression on at least a couple of professors. Unless you have the excuse of having been away from academia for a number of years, you should definitely have academic references.
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