<p>Remember to have your kids give their recommenders hand written, personalized thank-you notes after the recommendations are done. After your kid knows where they’ll be going to college, they also should at least verbally say “thank-you” again, and let the recommenders know what college they chose.</p>
<p>We have had quite an adventure with these recommendation letters. My D also needed a recommendation from her harp teacher for the music supplement. I thought she would just write about music but she tried to add a bunch of stuff about my D’s EC’s and activities at school. The only problem was that it was mostly incorrect information. Fortunately the teacher emailed us the recommendation to look at first and my D was able to correct the problems. </p>
<p>Unfortunately my younger child goes to a different high school and has a different music teacher so we will likely have a completely different experience with his applications.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reminder on the thank-you note.</p>
<p>I assumed the teachers would type rec on plain paper, preferably with kid’s name, and make 10 copies and then just scrawl “see attached” on each rec form and staple the rec to that. I don’t think anyone actually does 10 individual recs.</p>
<p>heyalb – As a person who writes a lot of recommendations, I can say that the additional information students supply doesn’t change my basic opinion, or my grade records, or anything else. But it often helps me to be more specific; to write more fully; to comment on how their performance in my class relates to their overall record. I even comment if I think test scores, etc., aren’t a good indicator of their actual abilities.</p>
<p>It’s also the case that since school ended last June, teachers tend to have a whole new batch of kids they’re getting to know this fall, and they aren’t writing recs til October or November, that it’s easy to forget details of a child’s performance. I also read a lot of recs, and specific illustrations of general statements are quite helpful. I think that’s the kind of stuff one might not easily remember.</p>
<p>So I guess that’s why we supplied all the information that we did – and because the teacher we consider one of the very best in the HS asked for all this from everyone. We figured if he wanted all this (and he knows my kids and us well), it was probably helpful to him.</p>
<p>Well I am now having another worry about my D’s recommendations. Instead of using the envelopes my D provided the GC took the recommendations from one of the teachers and put them in school envelopes and sealed them. Now we are trying to hold the envelopes up to the light and figure out which form is in which envelope. We found the MIT one and the Olin one but I can’t figure out which one is the Michigan one. I hope Michigan doesn’t throw out her application if they get a Common App form. Eeks!</p>
<p>Hello all,</p>
<p>I want to introduce myself to your wonderful community.</p>
<p>My name is Jeff, I’m an IT guy.</p>
<p>I want to say hello to all people here.</p>
<p>Northstarmom–another thank you to you for the thank you note reminder!! Son was accepted to 3 schools – I keep telling him to tell the teachers & thank them (hope he does).</p>
<p>I was adamant that kids write thank-you notes to teachers, GCs, and other recommenders. If the kids hadn’t done it by the time I had selected, they couldn’t go out, make calls, etc., until the thank-you notes were written, addressed, and stamped.</p>
<p>Yes–it’s only three notes. I should make that a number one priority for son, today. That’s important.</p>