You would be surprised – professors will remember student performance long after students graduate, especially if you did quality work. Contact a few of them and submit some of your work to rekindle their memory :) The other option is to track down a teacher that has left the institution. It might require some leg work but it's worth it if it produces a good recommendation.

Find the papers you turned in for them, or other project material, and include it in your request packet. It'll give them something to remember you by.

1) Look for some of your old prof's.

2) Call the school, tell them your situation, find someone to look over your work and write you a letter.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but...

If you don't have the energy to track down just one of your old profs, have a conversation to jog his/her memory and ask for a letter, then grad school work will bury you.

sir-smokes-alot do you buy any chance have a tv show called "The Ali G Show?"

A few years back I started being asked to be a guest critic at my former architecture school and I was surprised at how my professors there still remembered individual projects I did over 10 years ago. Give them a call.

I did a search on this type of thing so sorry if I'm dragging up old threads for people.....
but i have a question... I'll graduate from an undergrad BS Arch this June and am going to take at least a year if not two off for work. I know that I will apply to grad schools within this time but am thinking ahead.. I want to ask my professors for recommendations while I'm still here and then save a copy myself and have them save a copy so when time comes they don't have to worry about doing recommendations (and I'm asking them in the off-season) \

would there be anything wrong with doing this?\
my thought is that even though they'll be dated as a couple years old it should be quite clear to any admissions process that if you haven't been there in two years their ideas of you would be two years old anyway. I'm trying to avoid any chance they may forget/not want to write a letter down the road.

advice?

It's ok to request rec letters now that you're not planning to use for a couple years.
But some things to keep in mind about that:
Your letter writers won't be able to write about why you're a perfect candidate for School X because presumably you don't know yet which schools you'll end up applying to. So it will be all the more important that they write very specifically about you and your work. You may want to give them some images from your portfolio for reference when they're writing. You might also want to give them some idea about the schools you might be considering, and what you think your interests or areas of specialty might be at this point. Some letter writers will ask for the student to write an outline of the letter themselves first, and this can be very helpful to them too.

You should probably mention to the letter writers that you're planning to save the letters and use them when you apply in a couple years. One reason is that some of the schools send postcards to thank the letter writers, and you don't want them getting one of those two years from now and scratching their heads saying "what letter"?

Some of the schools provide envelopes in which the letters are supposed to be sealed and mailed directly by the recommender. Others are now collecting letters on their websites and again they're supposed to be submitted directly by the letter writer. So you may want to think about how you're going to deal with that if you have the letters written now.