I’m considering asking one of my teachers for a supplemental letter of rec to cover my recruiting for her creative writing class, which was a months long project I did during quarantine last year in response to the class not having enough applicants that year. While I tried to include it in my common app - doing question 5 - I feel like I don’t cover the whole value of the project. It took 349 words on my UC PIQs to cover it.
Note: I’d ask my teacher to totally focus on the recruiting rather than giving another letter of rec with the mention “yup, SailorMars004 helped recruit for my class too”.
Cons: it’s another letter of rec and a ton of online college advice sites say that supplemental from teachers are generally just fluff. It could hinder my admissions officer and weaken my application
Pros: recruiting a whole 36 students as my own project displays initiative and passion. I think it’s one of a kind enough to be more than just another teacher recommendation and cover what my common app can’t. Plus it’d be from my teacher’s POV.
What do you guys think? I could include my story in the “anything else we should know about” section instead, but won’t that be too much? To be honest, all I know about the common app is that there’s a prompt essay and supplementals, so I wonder if there’s another section I could write my story.
I’m confused - you say UC but correct me if I’m wrong, they don’t take LORs.
If you’re talking about a regular school, why didn’t you have the teacher write it as your one or one of two? Did you feel others would be more impactful.
I would follow guidelines. I believe typically when you do a third letter, they’re expecting it to be outside the classroom - a coach or employer, etc.
That said, as long as you follow a school’s guidelines, I don’t see an issue. It may not help. But I can’t imagine an admissions staff would be so vengeful as to say, they submitted an extra letter from a teacher when we said not to, so reject them.
What I’m saying is - it’s likely not needed. It may or may not help you but I doubt it would hurt you.
btw - I’m not sure what you mean it’d be from your teacher’s POV. Aren’t all letters from a teacher’s POV?
Where are you applying to? What is your major? It sounds like you have done applications done, but working on others.
A third specific letter may be okay at some colleges, over the top(possibly harmful to chances) at another college, and at some places may need to replace one of your first two letters.
Your school counselor could include this in their recommendation as something unique you did.
Look at the supplemental essays for the colleges you are applying to. There may be a nice match.
The common app creates a path for “a one and done” on the recommendations, so they all usually get the same letters. They may have already been sent. Does your school use naviance?
Thanks for the advice. What I meant was, I talked about the recruiting myself in the UC essays. But with common app, I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to tell my story as much as I did in the UC essay. As for being from my teachers POV, maybe they’d have more vouching power than I do.
Yes my school uses Naviance. Thank you for the advice about the counselor LoR, I didn’t think of that before. As to which schools I’m applying to, I want to apply to MIT and Princeton - among others - for computer science. I felt that my recruiting showed me being more well rounded.
Do you know anything about how long teacher LoRs usually are? Since I’d ask my third teacher for a specific topic, I could give them like a bound or something so as not to pester an admin officer
Oh and I asked other teachers for LoRs because, between my two English teachers, I was with the other through all of junior covid year, whereas the teacher I recruited with I was only in class with for a trimester freshman year.
Ok, you can probably work it into the essays for MIT and Princeton. MIT does not use common app, so make sure you are specific with your school counselor about which letters you want to go to MIT otherwise Naviance will just send the same ones. Make sure to send your teachers the MIT LOR blog/directions. There are helpful tips that can apply to all LORs, but they are specific for MIT.
The letters are usually a one pager. I can not remember if there are character or word limits.
Yeah I’ve seen MITs blog too. When you say work “it” into the essays, do you mean talk about the recruitment and avoid sending a supplemental? And is that for JUST MIT or the common app ones too.