I’m a bit confused about what she is supposed to send. DD is taking a very hard course load (according to her GC she is one of a very select few taking similar things) but her grades aren’t as stellar as quite a few other students. She takes on too many things and isn’t super organized. Anyway… she has a GC rec which I have no doubt is amazing. Then she had to ask 2 teachers. I’m sure her language teacher wrote a glowing one, but she wants to go into math/science. She asked her chem teacher, but because of her grades, and these teachers don’t know the overall kid I’m sure it will only be average.
She has her GS Gold Award, many medals and coaching hours for Science Olympiad, and 100s of hours volunteering for our local library children’s programs. All of the adults associated with these activities have offered (without her asking) to write her a letter.
When are these appropriate to send? How would we even go about it? Her GC has asked her which colleges need 1 vs 2 letters of rec and she had to choose which teacher’s letter to use. No mention ever of people that know her from other activities, but all of these adults have clearly written them before.
Thoughts? She’s looking at some reach schools and anything could help at this point.
It has been a while since my son did his college apps but I cannot think of any school that only wanted 1 letter of rec. You can check with the schools she is applying to to see if they accept more than one because many do accept more than the 2 usually asked for.
In terms of the letter of rec, your daughter can ask the teacher if he/she would like her to provide a sheet with the areas she has been involved in so they know when they are writing it.
The awards, medals etc have a place when she does her college applications. I believe she can go ahead now and create a Common app identity unless your school uses Naviance then you have to check with the GC.
Otherwise you yourself can create a dummy one if you want to hunt around in there and see what the Common app looks like. Each year the Common app, wipes out everyone’s log in to get ready for a next group https://www.commonapp.org
Your daughter can/should go onto each college website and read about the “application requirements.” Different schools have different requirements regarding letters. Some schools very clearly state that the student should NOT send additional letters. (Admissions officers do not have the time to go through extra materials). Having said that, she will most likely need two teacher letters and then one from the counselor since some schools will require all 3.
Good luck.
Where is the GC in this? Is DD a junior or senior?
Fwiw, few selective schools want non-academic LoRs, and it’s probably a negative to provide them unless they are extraordinary and provide a different perspective on the kid that a teacher wouldn’t get.
I don’t know how common this is, but at D’s school, the seniors are asked to fill out “brag sheets” of their achievements and activities even outside of school. They are supposed to give these to the counselor and any teachers they ask for recommendations, even if the person knows them well. Perhaps this is something your D could do for her STEM teachers that she wants to ask?
Thank you. She is a senior. Yes, GC is very involved… actually when I asked DD the GC is the one that told her which schools needed one vs. two teacher letters. (Plus her own I imagine.) I have no doubt any of the “extra” ones would be extraordinary and explain more than her STEM teacher’s will. While she does well in her STEM classes I don’t think she stands out from the other 150 students each of these teachers have.
She did give them a brag sheet (actually it’s on naviance) but I can’t imagine they would comment on things other than how they knew her in that class… although perhaps I am wrong.
We were not going to ask for any extra recommendations, but as I said 3 other people offered them, knowing how above and beyond her school work she goes to help others. I got the impression that they had all written similar letters before, and was wondering when kids would have used them. Her GC knows all of this info, and hopefully it will come across in her letter.
@zoemurr, it would be helpful in answering if you could give some idea of which the “reach” schools are, or at least their “type.” Michigan, Princeton, and Bowdoin are all reaches, but they’d respond very differently to additional LoRs. I’m giving those as examples only because they’re known nationally.
Thank you. She is looking at UPENN, CMU, RPI, RIT, WPI, Northeastern, Rose-Hullman, Binghampton and Stonybrook. According to Naviance the first 3 are reaches (obviously… but she is in the bottom part of the parameters) She is looking at either Computer Science or Computer Engineering. The rest she should have a fair shot, but of course who knows… RIT is her first choice right now and Binghampton 2nd due mainly to affordability.
I disagree with @IxnayBob …or at least part of what he says. If your D’s science teachers don’t know her well, the outside letters don’t have to be “extraordinary” to help. They do have to provide a different perspective than the other letters in her file, but that doesn’t sound like it will be tough to do… I’m not sure I’d send 3–that’s overkill. Choose 1-2. Take into account what they can say and who will be writing it. My hunch would be that the Science Olympiad adviser’s LOR might help in her case. The mentor might be able to describe her enthusiasm for science, her ability to explain scientific concepts to the kids in the program, etc. (Obviously, I don’t know. These are just ideas. )
It is a long time ago, I admit, but my D participated in an EC which involved a couple of schools. One of the private school kids asked the adult supervisor for a LOR. The adult called the college adviser and asked what sort of thing he should write. She told him to write a draft and come in to discuss it. He did. He reworked it. She made a few more changes and he submitted it. Another student asked for a LOR. He called the adviser and met to go over the draft. This time, no changes.
Then a kid from a public school asked for a LOR. Adviser called the GC. He was told he should write whatever he wanted and the GC didn’t have time to meet with him. So, using the info he’d learned from the private school adviser, he wrote a LOR.
When decisions came out the public school kid got into his dream school. About a week later, the adviser got a letter from the college, thanking him for his LOR. The letter said that the adviser’s LOR was the only thing in the file that made the kid more than a list of statistics like GPA, test scores, number of APs taken. The letter went on to say something like “You helped up see this young man as a person and understand how he could contribute to this college. If any other students from your program apply, we would very much welcome letters from you in the future.” He wrote one for my D and he definitely knew her better than any teacher.
Out of curiosity, I googled. Here’s what UPenn, one of her top choices, says:
The Common App will let you know, for each school, how many of what type of recommendations are allowed. So for instance if a school doesn’t want any recommendations other than teacher recommendations, there won’t be a place for the extra recommendations to be uploaded onto that school’s application. The Common App makes it easy to not make any mistakes this way; you can’t send extra recommendations to schools that don’t want them.
FWIW, my son sent in two outside letters to CMU. One from a med school professor with whom he’d worked a computer program to help him with some chemical analysis. It’s been cited in several papers. The other was from someone in the computer science industry who he’d work for two summers as well as part time during the school year. They both could speak to his self-taught skills and also that he can be a valuable part of a team - something that was less obvious at school where he was not very out-going.
My D goes to CMU and she sent an extra letter, but it was extremely germain to her area of study and showed lots of “above and beyond” kind stuff–additional info that would not necessarily be gleaned from her teacher recs. Only send an extra letter if it is going to do this. Otherwise it just extraneous “noise” so to speak. You say in her STEM classes that she does not stand out among the others in her class: this is going to be tough for CMU, as CS acceptance rate hovers around 5%. As @dadinator said, she has some tough schools on her list. Cast a wide net.