I have a few recommendations from volunteer supervisors and summer programs but no teacher recommendations. The schools I am applying to require teacher’s recommendations. Would one of the above letters work and if so what category (other or teacher) should I put it under on (Coalition and Common Application ).
Did you take any online classes? A recommendation from an online teacher would work.
You need to contact the schools in question to see if someone would be an acceptable replacement for a teacher recommendation.
Generally speaking, the stupid Common App will enforce the “Teacher” part. If the school indicates it wants a teacher recommendation and the person doesn’t check “teacher,” the Common App will say the application is incomplete due to a lack of teacher recommendation.
Talk to the school about either checking the teacher box or just mailing the recommendation separately. You can submit the entire student part of the app without the recommendations being complete on your Common App dashboard. (We ended up maililng one of our recs and while the Common App never showed complete, the school figured things out and we were complete on our college dashboard.)