<p>Along with the two teacher recommendations, is there a limit to how many supplemental recommendations you should have? I know there is no technical "limit," but what I mean is, is there a point where too many supp. recs can hurt your application?</p>
<p>I didn't really get a chance on my application (short essays) to elaborate about my commitment in debate. My debate coach wrote a recommendation, which I read. The rec pretty much covers what I would have said and more, and was very good, albeit only about 2-3 pages (although it's the first recommendation I've read, so I don't know if this it he usual length or not).</p>
<p>On my application, I did go in more about swimming, which is a much bigger commitment for me. I've known my swim coach since I was 9 years old, and we've always been on good terms. I've seen him everyday for 2-3 hours, every week, every year since then, and I'm one of his best swimmers, too. He was a journalist in NY before becoming a head coach and creating his own team, so I feel like his recommendation would be very very good.</p>
<p>Is it bad if I submit both supplemental recommendations along with the two teacher recs? That would be a total of 4 recommendations, twice the number of required recommendations, and I have a feeling that seeing so many would just turn off the admissions.</p>
<p>I’ll be blatantly honest: the ADCOM doesn’t really care too much. The more recommendations you send, the less time and effort they’ll put into reading them; they will not read deeply and analyze every single recommendation, especially if there are a lot of them. In the case of the person who sends 6 recommendations from various teachers that all basically say the same thing, sending a lot of recommendations would be a turn-off to the admissions officers. However, I think that in your case, the recommendations all discuss different important parts of your application and make your application a better application. If you had to pick only one of those two supplemental recommendations to send, I would send the debate team recommendation, but I think that you could send both and have it be beneficial to your application.</p>
!!! That’s a long rec. College admission representatives specifically told our counselors to write no more than a 1 page rec or else they won’t read beyond the first page. Quite frankly, if I was a admissions officer at Columbia I wouldn’t read more than one page since there are so many applicants. So I hope your coach didn’t spend his/her whole first page writing about your past and how he/she knows you.</p>
<p>haha no, well i meant its a little over 1 page single space, so it might be a little more than 2 pages double spaced. </p>
<p>and i have faith in my debate coach. he is a former valedictorian of Penn, and he has won multiple national debate championships in varying events. his writing is nice and concise.
thanks for the advice though! before then I really had no idea the recs were this short!</p>
<p>and thanks NBN - that helps too. I think I will end up sending both because it would just be unjust to my swim coach who’s known and guided me so much longer and so much more if i send only my debate coach’s rec.</p>