Your mom working their will not help you in applications , but it will probably hurt you if you mention it thinking that it ' s appropriate to put that on an application would show poor judgement . Getting a good letter of recommendation from your summer job will be very helpful . Definitely ask for one . The head of your mom ' s department would be no help unless you took courses in that department and they can also write you a LoR . Basically these connections only help if they taught or supervised you and can write you a good LoR . And a letter from a leading academic would probably carry more weight than one from , say , a new postdoc . <| sep |> That ' s a terrible argument . <| sep |> Still the best Calvin Rihanna collab