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Difficulties with requesting academic references

Hi All,

I'm applying to several post graduate courses and finding the whole request for an academic reference thing a big problem. As i'm not 100% sure which course I want to do, I want to apply to several courses but this means my old tutor needs to write about 6 different references. What makes it worse is that I graduated 6 years ago and my main tutor is no longer working there and another one said they haven't got the time to write it. I'm now relying on someone who barely knows me and they are becoming more and more reluctant to give me one. It's really putting me off applying to so many courses as they all seem to require at least one academic reference. Has anyone else had this problem and do you know anything to get around this?