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I am applying to some PhD programs and need three recommendation letters. Usually, the most important one is the letter from an MSc supervisor.

The issue is that my MSc supervisor is very strict and has a strong personality. He has the mentality that "I invest in MSc students, and when they finally get up to speed, they leave me for a PhD elsewhere." This has made him very upset.

To prevent this, he blackmails students through his letters of recommendation (LoR). For example, one of the people from our lab applied to several universities but was rejected by all of them because of his LoR. This person was only accepted by a university where the potential supervisor closely knew my MSc advisor and was already aware of his personality.

I asked him for an LoR, and he wrote one for me. However, I know exactly which weaknesses he picked on, and he exaggerated them enormously.

Basically, I think I have three options if I don’t want to do a PhD with him:

  1. Exclude him from my referees.
  2. Include him as a referee but provide the other side of the story in my Statement of Purpose (SoP) to counter any misrepresentation.
  3. Include him as a referee and personally talk to potential supervisors to explain the situation.

Option 1 seems like a big red flag. They will definitely ask why I didn’t get an LoR from my MSc advisor. They might even contact him via email, and if they do, he would likely say the same negative things that he would have written in the LoR. If that happens, it could be even more detrimental. I would need a reasonable justification in my SoP to explain why I didn’t get an LoR from him.

Option 2 is a bit tricky. It’s almost impossible for a student to criticize their advisor without seeming like they’re making excuses, and faculty often have an instinctive aversion to such complaints. The only way this could work is if the committee or potential supervisor is already familiar with my MSc advisor’s personality through another source—which, unfortunately, is not the case for most of the supervisors I’m applying to. They don’t know my advisor at all.

Option 3 feels quite unprofessional, to be honest.

What do you think I should do in this situation? Are there any other options?

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    "applied to several universities but was rejected by all of them because of his LoR" -- how do you actually know this? I don't think that the admissions committees will have shared this kind of information with anyone.
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented yesterday
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    ‘[H]e blackmails students through his letters of recommendation (LoR).’ That’s one hell of an accusation. You do have evidence, right?
    – A rural reader
    Commented yesterday
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    @Aruralreader what kind of evidence do you expect? If the prof said this orally, or implied and always write such letters one can have reasonable doubts about his integrity And this is not a court anyway;
    – WoJ
    Commented 18 hours ago
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    @WoJ Knowing what, if any, evidence exists will (hopefully) still lead to better answers.
    – Anonymous
    Commented 16 hours ago
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    @woj If there is no actual evidence, then the OP should add that to the question because that, too, will lead to better answers.
    – Anonymous
    Commented 12 hours ago

3 Answers 3

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Options 2 and 3 are much bigger red flags than option 1. I would absolutely not take on a student who used a referee they didn’t trust and then argued with the reference they received, whether in writing or verbally, or spoke badly about their referee. But I do understand that there are situations in which it is reasonable not to use your MSc advisor as a referee.

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    There are conflicts between supervisee and supervisor and omission from the referee list might indicate that - or it might indicate a weak candidate that wants to include the most knowledgeable referee. I think all the options are not ideal. OP should get really strong references from the others to counter the effect of excluding the supervisor.
    – Captain Emacs
    Commented 2 days ago
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    Kind of highlights a fundamental problem with academia. Moreso than in industry it seems weirdly common that people in academia end up in situations like this which are more about luck and inter personal skills than merit. Not that industry is fundamentally different, but the way people often seem to end up "trapped" with other people defining their career for them within academia seems... common . Why can't we live in a world where the answer would be a strong number 2, and it's distrusted at the first applicant making the claim, but once you have 10 applicants making the claim.. believable.
    – David Mulder
    Commented yesterday
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    @DavidMulder I honestly think "being trapped" like this is much, much less common than Academia.se makes one believe. It's just that those that are are likely to ask a question about it. In reality, most supervisors (even the bad ones) write decent letters for their students, and students who had a conflict with their supervisors still find follow-up positions.
    – xLeitix
    Commented yesterday
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    @DavidMulder And to answer the question: "Why can't we live in a world where the answer would be a strong number 2, and it's distrusted at the first applicant making the claim, but once you have 10 applicants making the claim.. believable." We live in that world. It's just that there are many groups and professors, so it's much, much more likely to be the first student who complains (to that person) about a specific supervisor than the tenth.
    – xLeitix
    Commented yesterday
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    @DavidMulder about the 10 applicants thing, it's tough to happen for real, because the first 9 are basically sacrificing themselves.
    – justhalf
    Commented yesterday
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"...one of the people from our lab applied to several universities but was rejected by all of them because of his LoR..." is purely speculative. It is impossible to know this for certain. You might listen to rumours, but consider what @xLeitix wrote in the comment: "In reality, most supervisors (even the bad ones) write decent letters for their students". I strongly support this opinion.

For this reason, I actually recommend that you do ask your supervisor for a letter of recommendation. All other choices are suboptimal. Note, that if you apply to EU countries, mechanisms exist for you to see these letters. For more details, see the discussion here, particularly the comment from @Marianne013.

I sincerely hope that you receive an excellent letter of recommendation and are accepted into the PhD program of your choice. However, if your application is unsuccessful and you have strong evidence to suggest that your supervisor included non-factual information in the recommendation letter, you may consider pursuing a defamation lawsuit. This could provide recourse if the rejection was indeed based on misinformation.

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    I totally agree that OP can't know why other candidates were rejected. But do we really want to go down a road where we ask an LOR of someone who we're so suspicious of we have to think about retaining a laywer?
    – John Madden
    Commented yesterday
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    Lies in a reference letter might be subject to a defamation suit, but why would the advisor fill a reference letter with lies? All they’d need to do to sink the candidate’s claims would be to give faint praise. Overemphasising real weaknesses would also not be subject to defamation action, and everyone has some. I agree with @JohnMadden — why use such a referee in the first place?
    – Significance
    Commented yesterday
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Do you have any other academics who you have worked with for your Masters? If so, you could consider asking one of those staff to give a letter of recommendation.

Also in my experience, universities will make allowances for the fact that your Masters supervisor doesn’t tend to know you that well - Masters degrees generally last for 9 months, and one applies for their PhD application after only 2 of these. Clearly this means that the Masters supervisor will not know you too well, and thus the undergraduate references may be weighted higher.

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