With no notice or deadlines, the 11th grade teachers my daughter was planning on asking for recommendations announced they are not taking any more requests. I am just venting. Students were never given a cut off date to request, nor were we parents. It seems arbitrary that the teachers decided it is tough luck to those who havent asked yet. Her options are: Ask anyway or ask 10th grade teachers or ask current spanish teacher.
Recommendation rationing is a reason why colleges using recommendations are injecting more elements not dependent on student ability and achievement into their admission criteria.
I can understand teachers needing to put limits on how many LORs they can write. That said, it seems early to me in the year to already be saying ‘no’ for college LORs, especially if the school didn’t communicate with students about when they needed to put in their requests.
I would try to ask a current teacher unless the 10th grade teacher knows her particularly well.
I would reach out to the guidance counselor and ask what your daughter should do. Is she sure this is a blanket statement from the 11th grade teachers or just the very popular ones? Is it that they don’t have time now? Or was this something your daughter was told but did not communicate to you?
Are the teacher planning on doing more recommendations when school starts again in the fall?
Wow, it is getting seriously competitive out there! While I understand that teachers don’t have unlimited amounts of time and aren’t necessarily paid for the time they do spend writing LORs, this doesn’t help reduce kids’ college stress any.
If this is a teacher she has had for a couple of years, maybe the teacher coached one your DD’s ECs… then I would ask anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me if teachers were holding a spot open for a favorite student or two.
I would fire them and bar them from ever again setting foot in front of a child.
The main subject teachers said this today. We will have to sort it out after vacation. They are off from tomorrow, returning April 29th. I believe my daughtr that they were never given today’s cutoff date. She has other friends who were taken aback too. Maybe it will all work out, i just feel bad she is going into vacation with this disappointment. It is a pity that it is such a rat race. Especially troubling that someone who may be valedictorian cant even get 11th grade recommendations.
My daughter’s 11th grade English teacher announced in the fall that she would only do a set number - I want to say 10 recommendations and there was an application process. If you had not had her previously (and my daughter hadn’t) you should not expect a LOR. I was glad that she was up front and had other options. But I agree with a previous poster that there’s A LOT of the process that’s out of the hands of the students.
Seems like when teachers ration recommendations this way (apparently first come first served with no pre-announcement that recommendations will be rationed), those with inside information (e.g. from older siblings who attended the high school) have an advantage in knowing to ask early.
Seems like if a teacher needs to ration recommendations, s/he should announce a deadline to apply to him/her for a recommendation, and then choose the students whom s/he can write the best recommendations for.
If that is case, it seems the school needs to set up a better system. And perhaps compensate the teachers in some way to write more recommendations. It would not be fair that kids “in the know” get recommendations and those out of the loop do not. But I can also understand teachers who are asked for dozens of recommendations to be done on their own time may need to set a limit.
If the teacher sets a date and then chooses the “best” students, what do the those shut out do? Their other teachers may have done something similar so it is too late to go to their second favorite. The best students get multiple recs but the OK students get none? Not every kid needs a glowing recommendation, but they all typically need a teacher recommendation to complete their application.
Agreed. Teachers limiting recommendations is not unique (and for popular teachers should be considered as a given). But I would have an issue if this was not made clear to students in advance.
Last year, my son’s calc teacher hit her limit in January - in like one day because once one kid asked, it was like a domino effect with all the other students racing to get their requests in. He had to ask his 10th grade math teacher for a recommendation.
I don’t know of any school that has a “cut off” date. The teacher probably reached a point early on where he/she got more requests than can be reasonably managed and just had to call a halt. A cut off date doesn’t help the teachers if they get 70 requests before the deadline, but they are only willing and able to do 25 or 30.
I’m completely sympathetic to the OP. The college admissions process is stressful enough on juniors and seniors. However, teachers only have the same number of hours in a day as everyone else.
"I would fire them and bar them from ever again setting foot in front of a child. "
That’s unfair. A teacher can spend an hour or more on just one student’s LOR. It is perfectly reasonable to set a limit, especially if they aren’t getting paid (or getting sub time… or some compensation) to write them.
Students who get more than two teachers willing to write recommendations must choose two; then the other teachers that “accepted” him/her can move down their lists to “accept” more students to write recommendations for. (Think of a “match” system like Questbridge or medical residency matching.)
Actually, this is not necessarily true in all places. For example, students in California do not need any recommendations for the public universities, which presumably greatly decreases the recommendation writing load on the teachers and counselors.
We have teachers writing 85 recommendations in my daughter’s class.
Wow. This seems really early to me! S17 had no troubles, only a few of the AP teachers put limits (but they were announced) and they weren’t who my son asked anyway. D21 is a much bigger, super competitive school. Good idea to have her ask to guidance counselor early next year what the expectations are!
And I’m sure every one is unique and personal, the best student she ever taught, a delight to have in class.
High Schools should consider developing their own recommendation forms which consist of just six to eight questions which require an appropriate box to be checked, for example: Well above average, above average, average or below average ability in this area. Some questions may have only three options : Recommend, Do Not Recommend or Insufficient Knowledge / No opinion.
Standardized & simplified recommendation forms can be much more efficient & fair.
P.S. If a teacher feels compelled to write more about a particular student, then it would be their option to do so.
I’ve heard of teachers only taking x amount of requests to write basically over the summer but then will accept more requests in the fall. My daughter did not go with traditional core teachers. She was going for business (accounting and finance). She asked an accounting teacher she had for two years and a dual enrollment business professor. She got accepted into every college she applied to so her approach worked out well for her.