My S19 is coming to the home stretch with applications. He has two letters of recommendation from English and Science teachers. He told his counselor yesterday that he is interested in having another teacher (not a core subject) write a letter for him. But the counselor strongly recommended that he not submit even one more letter than is required by the schools. His reason was that admissions will read the first letter and not bother with the others (if they require only one). Any truth to this?
Yep, my daughter had 2-3 LORS attached to her common app (back in 2012) and schools who said only one just uploaded and read the first one.
You should do the number the school asks for. If one teacher then give them only one. If there is someone outside school that knows something about the student that isn’t evident from school work you might ask for one.
My older son got a recommendation from the boss of the company that he had been doing computer programming for for the previous two years, and one from a medical school professor he’d written a program for that got cited in a paper. Since his school only offered on computer science course which he’d taken as a freshman that was the best way to document that he had taught himself programming well beyond what the school offered.
My younger son didn’t get any outside letters because there was no need. He got into great schools with just his two teacher recommendations.
Two letters from your high school teachers should be the maximum. The only exception is when you have such outstanding extracurricular achievements that an outside letter or two could serve your appeal effectively. Even then, I’d avoid the temptation to submit more than one. My son submitted one letter from his humanities teacher and one from his science teacher and one from a nationally renowned music conductor with whom he had the privilege of collaborating with in the capacity of concertmaster in a national orchestra. He had others who he could have requested for letters but capped at these three as the max.
Admission officers are swamped and are absolutely not looking for extra things to read. Having more LORs does not mean than the admissions officer will spend any more time reading the application.
The only way I would send in the additional LOR is if both of these conditions are true: 1) if it can be written as a supplemental/non-academic LOR – for example if it is from an art or music teacher or a coach discussing excellence, creativity, significant contributions in a non-academic pursuit, to an EC etc. and 2) if the colleges he is interested in will accept a supplemental LOR.
If teacher 1 says “Joe is great” and teacher 2 says “Joe is great” and teacher 3 says “Joe is great” you are making the admissions people work harder for no more info.
If teacher 3 was the band teacher and said that Joe was the best tuba player he has ever seen and cleans the tubas daily and helps with Tuba lessons shows the most leadership ever, then that might be worthy of adding a third recommondation letter for.