Bad Teacher Rec.... ?

Applying to College
1

<p>Hey everyone,</p>

<p>My foreign language teacher has taught me for all 4 years of high school. I am one of her favorite students - I am the president of the french club this year, VP last year, involved with french honors society, and I participate heavily in class. </p>

<p>She said she would love to write my recommendation last year (junior year) and so I gave her all the materials in September in time for early decision. </p>

<p>I gave her my resume, transcript, and a questionnaire with specific details about what I enjoyed in her class, my favorite projects, what I did in French Club (fundraising, adopted french child from haiti, crepe parties, and more), how I've changed from the freshman year French class to this year's French class, why I asked her for this recommendation, etc etc etc. </p>

<p>She sent out the rec but gave me a copy... I will PM it to you if you care to read it because I'm a little concerned.</p>

<p>This is the first letter of recommendation this teacher has ever written, but I decided to take a chance because I thought she knew me very well. </p>

<p>The letter turned out to be incredibly generic, no specific details/anecdotes, and she wrote that I was the president of the French Club last year (I was VP and wrote this on my application). I know she means what she says in the letter, but it comes across as superficial.</p>

<p>On the checkmarks, she checked the middle range (very good) for productive class discussion. She checked excellent for academic achievement, quality of writing, self-confidence. I'm ranked 2nd in my class of nearly 500 people, had excellent grades in her classes, and she nominated me for the Department award in foreign language (she didn't mention it in the letter). Yeah...... I know checkmarks are pretty arbitrary but I'm surprised she checked academic achievement lower than most of the other categories.</p>

<p>Anyway, any thoughts about what I can do?
She already sent out the recommendations to my regular decision schools....</p>

<p>I can't help but be a little worried and upset about this even though it is only one part of my application.</p>

2

<p>sorry for the long explanation</p>

3

<p>She also wrote in 14 size font and Comic Sans MS......</p>

4

<p>get 2 more teacher rec :)</p>

5

<p>Yeah, you should pick a more experienced teacher.</p>

6

<p>pm it to me. comic sans does not look good, but if the content is ok, just ask her to change it.</p>

7

<p>If I were to ask another teacher, wouldn't it look suspicious to the college if I ask them to disregard the teacher rec they just received? </p>

<p>It seems like I'm just stuck....</p>

8

<p>I don't think you can ask the colleges to disregard the recommendation that was already sent, but if it is that generic, they would most likely disregard it if they had 2 other recommendations that really made you come alive for them. They understand that not all teachers are good at writing recommendations. If ALL your letters are equally mediocre, they will think you are the problem, but if only one is, I don't think it will hurt you (but it won't help either, so definitely get 2 more from other teachers).</p>

9

<p>Thanks for your input eg1. I have two other great recs from my English teacher and my guidance counselor. The french teacher's rec is the only Blah one. </p>

<p>The only teacher I can ask at this point is my math teacher, and I think he would be annoyed that I'm asking him so late compared to everyone else (people in my school all asked in september, early october). Plus, many of the top schools I'm applying to ask that applicants don't send in supplementary recommendations for the most part. </p>

<p>I am hoping that this one recommendation won't have much effect on admissions.</p>

10

<p>Get one other teacher in more academic class to write a recommendation pronto--history teacher, science or math teacher. Then the foreign language teacher's rec will just seem like an "extra rec" that applicants sometimes send because the teacher in question knows them through an EC in which the teacher is involved.</p>

<p>You can't tell them to disregard the rec once sent. That would draw too much attention to it. You are better off making the school slightly annoyed with you by being seen to send in this extra French teacher rec.</p>

11

<p>pm it to me, I have experience in terms of rec letters (hell I had to write a couple myself, and I'm a high schooler lawl)</p>

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<p>Haha, thanks st. aegis. PMed it to you!</p>

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<p>lol regarding your post in the thread i made, i have the same concerns about the checkmarks too -- except i got top 5% for all except 4 areas where i got top 10%, so I didn't really have much to say about that.</p>

14

<p>I will be happy to read her letter of rec. send it over to me and i will be honest.</p>

15

<p>if it's in 14 font and comic sans i don't think colleges would take her seriously. I'm sorry, she may really love you, but she obviously has no clue what she's doing. Feel free to PM me the letter. I think you should ask another teacher, even though it might be too late. Talk to your guidance counselor and get his/her input.</p>

16

<p>^Dude. Not cool.</p>

<p>Stop being an idiot and go away.</p>

17

<p>hey as a followup note, I just approached my teachers today after the mishap with my bio teacher's rec. My history teacher, who taught me in fresh and junior year, said he was swamped with recs and that he couldn't help me. BUT he was helpful enough to go through all my teachers and we finally settled that I would have to ask my senior teachers (I exhausted all my other teacher options).</p>

<p>So I went in to my physics teacher today and asked her for a rec. To my luck, she only had 2 recs to write (lol at this...she's a regular chem teacher who just swapped to honors physics this year, so she isn't a big target for recs just yet) and in 5 minutes, she reviewed over everything she wanted (TO MY SURPRISE -- I gave all these materials to my bio teacher and he didn't even USE any part of it). She went over the general format of her letters and told me what parts she found special and asked me to list things that I wanted her to stress. It was like the perrrrfffeeecttt teacher to ask for recs. I'm so relieved now after a day of stressing.</p>

<p>My history teacher pointed out that asking senior year teachers doesn't hurt -- that it may even help you as it provides a more recent and a first-impression point of view to the colleges. It makes sense now that I think about it and now I'm terribly happy with the seriousness my physics teacher is taking my recs (she already guaranteed it won't be generic). </p>

<p>So, moral of the story? Try asking a senior year teacher whose class you're doing well in. It even may provide an edge to your apps by doing this :] Best of luck to everyone who's had the same problems as the OP and myself!</p>

18

<p>Care to PM me the letter?</p>

19

<p>yes, just ask another teacher...Comic Sans...ugh...that doesn't sound good.</p>

<p>A lot of rec's can end up being generic...I saw a teacher I was going to ask doing her recommendations. She literally only changed the name of the person and the topic of their term paper for about 50 people.</p>

20

<p>How come your college counselor doesn't give you advice on who to get a rec from? Mine did, plus I pretty much knew who I wanted.</p>