Hi everyone—I am currently a rising high school junior who plans to take a leave of absence next school year for extracurricular-related purposes. I know that rising seniors are supposed to ask for letter of recommendations from preferably junior year teachers, but given that I will not be going to school in-person next year and am just taking online, mostly asynchronous classes, I am finding it hard to expect good LORs from my junior year teachers. I have attended my school for a few years and plan to return as a senior, so I suppose I could ask previous teachers, but I really don’t have a strong bond with, particularly, any of my STEM teachers from 9th/10th grade that I could reasonably ask to write a good LOR. Do you all have any advice on what I should do to develop strong LORs online or how to keep in touch with teachers at my home school? Thank you!
Are there any teachers you will have senior year that you also had freshman or sophomore year? If so, they might be able to speak to the growth that you’ve had throughout the years. Are any of your senior year teachers current advisors/mentors/coaches for an extracurricular of yours, whether it’s the one you’re doing online school for or otherwise?
You could ask sophomore year teachers, or wait until senior year fall semester (you might have some of the same teachers as during sophomore year?)
Will you have relationships at all with online teachers?
Most importantly, for interesting “outliers” like you (colleges told us they love outliers), you may want to submit some sort of supplement related to your leave of absence with relevant letters of recommendation.
I might also suggest, for peace of mind, that you talk to admissions at schools you might be interested in, or as a sampling (and don’t talk to a student).
I don’t think this is a big problem, Chances are the LOR’s from school teachers won’t be a crucial part of your application since it sounds like you are doing something interesting next year.
@CiaraFin Good idea, but unfortunately I don’t think that I will have any of my freshman/sophomore teachers in senior year outside of electives and extracurriculars. But we’ll see!
@compmom Thank you for the advice! I might have a bit of a relationship with my online teachers, but there are no synchronous class times or anything and the most contact I’d have is probably a few emails and a 10-minute video call once a semester in each of my classes…not looking too good haha. And thanks for those final words—your advice about submitting supplements + hopefully that LORs won’t be too impactful is interesting! For reference, I will be working/traveling in the performing arts (Equity national tour) for the next year so I had to make some sacrifices with my other extracurriculars. Even if it’s not ideal for college admissions, I just think that it will be a cool life experience and am excited nonetheless. I am not planning on going into theatre, so I am not sure of what type of supplement I would submit to support the experience, but I definitely do plan to explain the leave of absence and why I’m submitting multiple transcripts when it comes time to apply for college.
Colleges will love this. Your leave and tour are absolutely ideal for college admissions. I am PM’ing you. And you don’t have to be going into theater.
Glad you are submitting more than one transcript. That was going to be my other question.
I’m not sure if it’s appropriate for me to ask here considering that I started this thread for another issue, but what are everyone’s thoughts on me not taking the PSAT given my situation? I will be away when the PSAT is administered and as far as I know you register for the PSAT through your school. My school offers the PSAT so I don’t think it would be possible for me to register to take it in another city. Any ideas?
Are you going to need merit scholarships? You would probably be eligible given your activities this coming year. That would be the main reason for taking the SAT or ACT. Not sure if the PSAT would be necessary: though you could get a National Merit Scholar commendation I suppose. I don’t think you need it for admissions and not worth stressing over if hard to arrange National Merit Scholarships and the PSAT | The Princeton Review
However, maybe you could call College Board and explain your situation-?
For the future, here is a list of test-optional schools: FairTest | The National Center for Fair and Open Testing If you haven’t seen this, you will be surprised! Again, some will require scores for merit aid, but not all.
This is great, thanks! I plan to take the SAT once this August before I leave, and potentially again at the beginning of senior year. The only issue would be with the PSAT. I called College Board and talked to my school and now plan to start reaching out to some schools in the area where I will be at the time to see if I can take the PSAT there.
Glad your efforts are making it possible. Have a great year!
Life update: I have asked my 10th grade APUSH teacher and my 11th grade online AP Literature teacher (our class is only 4 people and this is the only high school class that my teacher is teaching, so we have formed a pretty strong bond!) for letters of recommendation and they both said yes. Though I know most sites say to choose one STEM + one humanities teacher, given that I am not planning on applying for a STEM major, I am happy with my choices.
Hopefully this helps anyone in a similar situation who may be stumbling upon this thread in the future!