Can We Talk LORs?

Parents Forum
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Going thru the college app process with my 17yo ds who is a junior. He’s a good kid, likeable, decent stats, strong athlete, team player… We’re proud of him.

My 14 yo dd just has a different personality and is a real go getter. Loves serving, loves learning, hardworking, self-motivated, a leader in the classroom and in her sport … She’s applying to a volunteer program this summer and needed a couple of LORs. She requested them from people who know her well and are ALWAYS gushing over her and telling me how highly they think of her. One of them even said she’d be “honored” to write a LOR.

Well, when we got the letters back, I thought they were good, and I was thankful. But they didn’t seem like anything special that wouldn’t be said about any of the other candidates that are applying to the program. They are the kind of letters I would expect to read about my oldest child, not this one.

Now, I don’t know if I am looking at this through a mommy lens or if people aren’t that good at conveying genuinely strong feelings about a person in writing or if these letters are strong and I just don’t realize it.

I want to emphasize that I am very thankful people took time to write these letters, and I think they are sufficient to get into the program.

I am just wondering about LORs, in general. I’m just wondering what your experience has been.

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  1. You won't get to read your senior's letters. He should waive the right to (there is a place for it on the apps, I think). Colleges take letters a student can see with a grain of salt -- they assume the teacher may have smoothed out any rough spots in it.
  2. Make a list of possible teachers for your kid to ask. Then ask the GC their advice. They often know who writes good letters and who is not as strong.
  3. Be wary of teachers who did not grow up in the US education system. They sometimes will bluntly describe your kid's weaknesses in a letter. That puts your kid at a disadvantage.
  4. Some teachers will ask a student to fill out a form or provide a brag sheet or something to help them understand your kid's goals, etc. If they ask the kid to describe themselves, find adjectives that are stronger. Stay away from "nice", etc. Better to be described as a leader, an intellectual, etc. If you get a chance to provide some input in that way, carefully consider what story your kid is trying to present in their app. It is good if the LORs are consistent in that way with the app.
  5. Ask early. My kids' school had them ask for one in spring of junior year (around April) and one right after school started in the fall. Your school might have rules. Find out what they are.
  6. Hard to say about your D's letters. Maybe keep in mind to NOT ask those teachers for letters in the future.
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I write LORs for undergrads applying to everything from minor work study positions on Campus to prominent grad school programs across the country. The amount of time and effort I spend on each LOR is directly correlated with the reason for the LOR. I’ll spend an hour on a two paragraph for a low stakes letter or 6 hours on a 2-3 pager for a high stakes one. It’s possible that the teachers saw a volunteer summer program for a 14 year old as low stakes. As your children enter the actual applying to college phase, you can speak with the school counselor and ask if s/he reads the LORs before submission in order to flag any issues.

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You probably can’t change whether the GC reads them or not, though. They did at our small independent private school, but I’m guessing it is less likely at a large public HS with GC staff stretched thin.

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Some people are just not clever with words. They may have a wealth of deep respect for your child, but they can’t convey this easily on paper. My kids asked for recs from witty, highly verbal people. Fortunately, one of these was the calculus teacher!

I strongly encourage your son to come up with a brag sheet for himself to give to his GC. Sometimes, they will lift the students’ own words for their LORs when they don’t know the student well or find a turn of phrase particularly insightful.

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I wouldn’t list the schools they are applying to or get too detailed on major. The recs need to be generic enough to be used across many schools, and teachers can stumble on that. “Jimmy will make a fabulous engineer” doesn’t fly at the school where thry don’t have engineering, but they have a Physics program that intrigues him, for example.

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FYI: Waiving one’s right to see your LORs doesn’t mean that you can’t see them at all, only that you can’t request to see them in the records of the school to which they are sent. Many LOR writers will show applicants their letter to check for accuracy before sending it or even have the applicant help draft the letter,

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D2 asked for 3 LORs and had her GC pick 2 to submit.

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@jazzymomof7 – That is why I always felt it was important for my kids to be able to see their LOR’s. My daughter had the exact same situation in high school – a teacher who seemed really impressed with her and volunteered himself to write a LOR… added benefit that it was coming from a STEM teacher-- but the letter itself was “meh”. The best (and totally amazing letter) came from a teacher she knew well but with whom she also had frequent conflicts – but exceptionally strong LOR. So no – my daughter never checked those “waiver” boxes and it didn’t hurt her on college admissions – but it did give her the ability to choose to submit the LOR that had the most life and portrayed the most detailed picture of her. (It’s not about empty praise – it’s about an LOR that brings the applicant to life and makes the person seem interesting or intriguing to the ad com).

(I’d note that my son did check the waiver box – but his teachers provided copies of the LOR’s to him anyway – “waiving” the right to see them doesn’t preclude a teacher from voluntariliy sharing).

When my daughter was younger, applying to a high school requiring LOR’s, she actually had a teacher who deliberately tried to sabotage her application, by offering to write a LOR that he mistakenly believed would be confidential and then really trashing my DD in the content. (LOR was handed to us in a sealed envelope, but the school wanted us to submit multiple printed copies along with other materials in an application packet – this is back in the days when stuff was done on paper – so we had to open the envelope to photocopy and fortunately DD was able to get a LOR from a different teacher). But that’s the reference point that led to my daughter’s refusal to waive.

As noted, a good LOR isn’t about hollow praise, and down the line an ad com can tell if the writer truly knows the student and has experience with that student from the detail. Some kids really don’t stand out enough that their teachers can really supply that – but it sounds like your 14 yo definitely has that stand-out quality.

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This is a good reference about recommendation letters…not sure what you can do with it though.
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs

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OP, I am not a teacher but I have written several rec letters, especially for young people who have spent time volunteering with me. Most of these have been for local scholarships and other programs.

I have also been on a committee that judges applications for local scholarships and I have read hundreds of letters. I have noticed that a lot of kids have asked their sports club team coach or scout master, etc for a LOR, as this particular scholarship is based on community service, so our guidelines suggest that the LOR come from someone in the community who is familiar with the service - this often eliminates many teachers, who usually write better letters.

We have had a few LORs that have been just terrible - there is one scoutmaster who not only writes an awful LOR, he quite clearly simply changes the applicant’s name only - and last year submitted 4 different kids references using the same letter, changed only for the name. Since the program he has helped run is fairly well known and quite remarkable, we don’t want to penalize the applicants for the “laziness” of the writer, so we have weighted the LOR a bit lower, and we rely on the other criteria a bit more.

For college applications, the local HS guidance department will only include 2 teacher’s rec letters. The teachers who are known for writing wonderful letters tell students to sign up by the end of May, and that they will only write 30 letters, because they clearly spend time on each one, and they will do them over the summer.

I agree with @ProfessorMom1 - the amount of time depends on the stakes involved. Since college admit letters often are automatically the same application as merit and financial aid, they understand that a good letter can mean over a quarter of a million dollars in students’ lives. But many kids leave the asking to the last moment anyway.

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My kids guidance counselors were really helpful in this department. Asked the kids very early on “who do you think might write your recommendations” and then without slamming a particular teacher, were able to guide the kids in the right direction. One VERY popular teacher got a “why don’t we think about someone with less on her plate” which suggested to us that this teacher did a perfunctory job. One teacher who was a phenom in the classroom but always a day late and a dollar short on paperwork got a “I think Mr. So- and So thinks you are a really strong writer and thinker”, i.e. a very diplomatic redirect.

If your kids GC’s are on the ball, you may be able to get some help in avoiding the bad writers, the “change the name but leave the letter the same” writers, or the “Joey tries really, really hard and is the hardest worker I’ve every seen in all my years of teaching” which pretty much says “This kid is a dolt but with a really good work ethic to compensate”.

I’ve written recommendations for people who work for me for various grad programs and have seen other letters that people write- Oy, so terrible in so many ways.

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My D was told to check the confidential box. She only saw a letter from her EC mentor who she has known since she was six. This letter was incredible but, then again, she has known my child since she was in kindergarten.

I wonder if teachers rank the current class and then write their letters with considering how one student compares to their peers?

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The prompts to teachers specifically asks instructors to put the kids in context-- so how could they NOT compare a kid to their peers? Kids who get described as “one of the best I’ve taught in my career” are not the same as “Joanne is always prepared for class and always hands her assignments in promptly”, and is not the same as “Julie studies very hard and is frequently looking for extra credit opportunities to boost her grade in my class”.

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That is fair.

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Some of my sons classmates got into top schools the prior year. He asked those students who they used and that’s who he used. Figured if they worked for them they should work for him.

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I think one tactic that really worked well for my 2nd son was following this process:

1> Strategically pick teachers that he knows pushed him harder, not just liked him
2> Once the teacher is picked, approach them and ask them in the Spring of the Junior year if they would write a letter of recommendation for him.
3> After they said yes, he wrote a personal thank you card for them volunteering their time and in that thank you card he included what he thought School “X” was looking for. He only applied to two schools. The USNA and the University of Chicago. For the USNA, he asked if they could focus his recommendation on Integrity and Leadership. Because of the USNA large application and accelerated timeline, he asked this to be sent in the Summer after his Junior year. Once his senior semester started, he wrote a second note asking for recommendations to UChicago. In this he stressed leadership, integrity, and added academic curiosity.

4> When he received his LOA from the USNA, he wrote a third note to the teachers thanking them for their help and to let them know that he received a Letter of Assurance from the Naval Academy.
5> When he was accepted ED1 at UChicago, he sent a fourth note, with an Amazon Gift Card to the three teachers, thanking them again for their time and effort.

This is totally different then my oldest who just basically walked up to his favorite teachers and asked for an LOR. The teacher he thought would be strongest just sent a form letter that didn’t even include my son’s name. He ended up getting accepted to every school he applied to, but his first pick was deferred at EA and wait listed after RD. He ended up picking another school because he was differed, and I believe the major reason he was differed was his less than stellar LORs.

Both checked these as confidential, so other then the form letter (my oldest somehow saw it attached to his file after he started college, I’m not sure how, nor do I think I want to know how he did that) we have no idea what they said.

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My kids checked the confidential box, but some of the teachers showed them the letters anyway. I didn’t see them, but from what my kids relayed I have no complaints. I was particularly impressed with the math teacher my son loved, but he only got a B+ in his class. He was right to choose him. He really got my kid and talked about how he had a real mathematical understanding even though he couldn’t always work fast enough or remember formulas well enough to do well on tests. (He figured out the Pythagoreum theorem from scratch. LOL)

We did get a bit of a wake up call with my second son. That year as part of the brag sheet process they asked the kids to get two recommendations from teachers that would go to the counselors to help them with their letters. My son figured he’d probably use different teachers than he did for the real letters. He asked his orchestra teacher for one of them. He’d been in two orchestra with this guy every year of high school, but the letter was absolutely as generic as you could imagine. A few short lines. We knew there was no point in ever using that guy for anything again!

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I read a good [url = <a href=“https://www.collegeconfidential.com/admit/optimizing-your-recommendations/%5Dletter”>https://www.collegeconfidential.com/admit/optimizing-your-recommendations/]letter of recommendation article here on CC. We used pieces of it along with the brag sheet. Here’s the first part of it. Hope that’s ok.

Optimizing Your Recommendations by Dave Berry

Most important: A cover note. In this cover note you should say something like this: “I have been told that admission officials most value letters that emphasize anything that is unique or particularly outstanding or memorable about the applicant.”

To help your teachers with this, add a couple reminders. What were the highlights of your experience with this teacher? Did she copy your research paper and distribute it to the entire class? Did he urge you to publish your short story in the school literary magazine? Did you get the highest grade on the final exam? These may be magic moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, but—believe me—even the most doting teachers could have forgotten already.

Similarly, what were your general strengths in this class? Did you participate actively in discussions? Did you stay late for extra help until you finally grasped a tough concept? Did you go from a 79 in your first marking period to a 95 in your last? Did you volunteer to tutor another student who was struggling? Sometimes, the highlights may include things that aren’t really academic at all (“Remember how we used to argue about the Mets vs. the Yankees in the hallway?”). Academics should be at the forefront of your “highlights,” but it’s fine to mention one or two of those things, too.

Trust me, though it may feel a bit awkward to put your successes down on paper, your teachers will be grateful to you for refreshing their memories and for enabling them to write the recommendations with minimal hassle.

If you ask a teacher for one reference now, and you think you may want others in the future (but you’re not sure of the specifics yet), it’s important to remind this teacher that you will probably ask again, once your list of target colleges is finalized. That way, the teacher will be sure to save a copy of the initial reference, which he or she can amend or ”recycle” down the road, as needed.

Personally, we used someone’s good advice of a little gift card. Our student handed them out when teachers said yes to the LOR request, at the end of junior year. It was a great way to get to know the counselor too. In early senior year, we had our student deliver updates to each recommender. In it, we had a list of most probable schools and deadlines, printed a customized Google map of pinned locations of colleges since some were obscure, listed possible majors/careers, and included a short anecdote or memories with that teacher (as advised above). This plus the school required brag sheet seemed to be helpful. When deadlines were getting near, we thanked again with candy. Just a gentle indirect reminder for those that weren’t finished. We weren’t perfect in the college app process, we didn’t expect it from them. It’s stressful though. Seemed to turn out well as the teachers came through, even when Naviance didn’t cooperate.

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Giving teachers gift cards is prohibited in our public high school