Should I submit one strong recommendation letter or one strong letter and one weaker letter? I'm a third year undergraduate engineering student in India.

I am applying for a research program at a foreign university which will start at the end of my third year. This internship program requires at least one and a maximum of two letters of recommendation. As is the case for many students in my college (and I suspect many Indian engineering undergrads as well), I do not have much interaction with most of my professors outside of classes. My grades are decent but nothing spectacular in my courses.

Hence, I only have one strong letter of recommendation from a professor with whom I am doing a project. The rest of my professors who I have spoken to about the same have only given me tepid responses and have advised me to come back only if I cannot find anyone else ready to give me a letter.

In this case, what should I do for filing my LoRs? Would it be better to submit only the strong LoR or should I submit a weaker LoR as well?
It depends a lot on how you define "a weak LoR". Consider 5 levels:


+2: My best student in 10 years.
+1: DWIC (did well in class) + hard working, take initiative etc
0 : Simply DWIC, e.g. Kerkyra's LoR.
-1: He was in my class, he asked me to write LoR.
-2: Don't take him


Unless you make someone very upset, people will not write a -1 and -2 LoRs. If you believe the weak ones are still +1s, you can submit.

FYI, I fell out with my Master thesis advisor, and decided not to use his LoR (he still offered to write one). I managed to get 3 PhD admissions with full scholarship using three +1 LoRs (but I submitted more than 50 applications).

Good luck!