<p>I was sitting in on one of those college visits the other day, from NYU, and the representative lady told us that every year some kid sends in 8 or more letters of rec. I was under the impression that only two were required from teachers, with an optional outside rec. At least, that's the standard for most schools. That got me thinking, though, that I have two outside recs, one from a math teacher at a community college where I had taken courses over the summer, and one from a PhD whom I did research with. Since I am applying for engineering (hopeful Duke '13), I would really love to have a math teacher give me a rec. Then again, the PhD rec holds a lot of weight. Would it be a problem to send in four letters of recommendation (two from highschool teachers, one from community college professor, one from research experience), or would this be a downer? Anybody have experiences with this?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance,
Romanian</p>
<p>PS
The school says to send in two from highschool teachers and one optional outside rec. Says nothing about adding more than one. But still, 1 != 2, 3, etc</p>
<p>I've heard that a person should NEVER send in more than 3.</p>
<p>I visited Santa Clara University last weekend for their Open House and the admissions lady said that if you send in more than 3, then they just randomly pick 3 to look at and disregard the rest. I'm pretty sure other colleges/universities do that as well. So make sure you only choose the 3 rec writers that will write you the best recs and stick with them. The person that sent in 8 rec letters to NYU was clearly trying to impress by overkill -- and I'm almost positive that having those 8 letters of rec did not help him, as the NYU admissions people probably only looked at 3 of the 8 letters.</p>
<p>^^^Agree with FF & Silver, and only if the 3rd is a very strong rec that address an aspect of you that hasn't been covered by the required recs.</p>
<p>I'm doing 3 teachers + 1 counselor for most of my schools... 'cause I think each teacher has something important to say about me... will colleges hate meee? :[</p>
<p>i think that as long as you don't go over...say...5? and each of your recs has something significantly new/impressive to say about you..you'll be fine. it's not so much that the colleges don't want to see more rec letters rather than they don't want to read the same things repeated over and over.</p>
<p>Any more than the number required by the school is just overkill. The adcoms won't bother to read it seeing as how they're swamped with thousands upon thousands of apps to read.</p>
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Are transfer applicants required to send in a letter of rec besides the teacher form?
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<p>Transfer applicants send 2 LORs from College instructions (profs or TAs), not HS teachers.</p>
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i think that as long as you don't go over...say...5? and each of your recs has something significantly new/impressive to say about you..you'll be fine.
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<p>If you mean the 2 required and 3 supplementals, that's too much. </p>
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The adcoms won't bother to read it seeing as how they're swamped with thousands upon thousands of apps to read.
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<p>While I'm not a big advocate of sending supplemental recs, this statement isn't really true. For instance, I was just sitting in on a session given by the head AO at a top LAC and he said that they will read some extra recs, but that admissions people also have the saying, "the thicker the file, the thicker the applicant". So, ONE supplemental is OK, but you ought to have a very good reason for it.</p>