It always pays to have a backup plan

I am disappointed in my third recommender for Stanford. After promising to get it done by last Monday, I got no love. Followed up with an email. No response. This person has a reputation for missing deadlines. Not good. Rewind to last Thursday. I was discussing the situation with another partner (who had already written me a recommendation for Chicago) who also knew my Stanford recommender. She was concerned and told me if I needed her to write one for Stanford, she would do it. I told her the Stanford recommender had promised to have it by Monday, so thank you but I don't think I'll need it. As Monday turned into Tuesday and Tuesday turned into Wednesday, I started to have another concern. If my Stanford recommender hadn't started it yet (when he promised to have it done by Monday he indicated he hadn't started yet), would he have enough time to write a quality recommendation or would it be a generic "he's good you should admit him" letter? After thinking about it, I decided to go back to the Chicago recommender and ask if her offer was still on the table. It was, and she said she has time Friday (today) to do it. While I am more confident that she will get it done on time and it will be good, since she already has the basic outline and examples from Chicago, I don't feel great about telling the first recommender I don't need him anymore. I sent him an email to let him know I didn't need a recommendation. I'm going to see him in China next week so I'll have to smooth things over then. Even though I feel bad about it, the bottom line is that I had just lost confidence that he would actually get it done on time.

Besides that, everything else for Stanford is going well. Got my reviewers' feedback on my essays, and it's positive with only minor suggestions of places where I ramble at bit and could be a bit more succinct and impactful. So, I will work on revisions tonight and tomorrow and submit tomorrow afternoon or evening. Then it's off to a bar with some friends to lift a glass and celebrate being done with this stage of the process.