Lets talk letters of recommendation

College Majors Theater/Drama Majors
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<p>Continuing on the theme of important subjects as the Class of 13 starts (and parents!) try to work their way through this, lets talk letters of recommendation. </p>

<p>First question, does anyone think they factor in much at all in the decision for actors?</p>

<p>I ask this question first since it doesn’t seem at all clear to me how one even gets letters of recommendation from people who would seemingly have something useful to say with respect to passion, dedication and ability with respect to the arts. I have not made my way completely through the common app. but it looks to me like letters of recommendation flow out of the selection of teachers at the high school. Is there way in the common app. to select a letter of recommendation from anyone other than a high school teacher? My daughter is basically an unknown entity among her teachers. She gets Bs and As mostly and does nothing to call attention to herself as a matter of design. I think a couple teachers know she’s the kid who has been in a couple of TV shows and few commercials but that is about it. What could they possibly say about her that would have any bearing on her application?</p>

<p>On the other hand, she’s at CMU this summer and has a couple of full time faculty who have commented favorably on her work and passion for the field. She has a couple faculty from last summer at Stella Adler who would give her favorable recommendations. She has a director from a TV show who would give her a good review. She has a couple of community theater directors she could get reviews from. She has a local acting teacher she’s worked with for over 5 years. What should I do with this? I am inclined to just have her get one from a CMU teacher as being the best bet. But how do you work this? Ask them to separately send in letters of recommendation in addition to the common application?</p>

<p>I know this a subject that has been discussed before and I could go search what people have previously said (which I don't rememember). But given this is a timely issue for the class of 13, it seems worth a new discussion.</p>

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<p>The regular required letters of recommendation are generally sent by academic teachers as part of the application to the college. For common app schools, you can do this more or less automatically. As I recall, you give the Common App the teachers’ email addresses. The Common App does not send in recommendations from outside people.</p>

<p>Supplementary artistic recommendation letters may or may not help, at least in the case of an auditioned BFA. Check the application procedure for the theatre program in question. The main thing for auditioned BFA programs is…the audition. </p>

<p>Requirements vary a great deal. Some schools might even want you to bring artistic recommendation letters to the audition (SUNY Purchase did this when my son applied…then they had callbacks the day of the audition and I strongly suspect that the letters of those who were not called back were just thrown away).</p>

<p>Some schools ask you NOT to send in artistic recommendation letters. NYU is like this, I believe. It is important always to do what the school says!</p>

<p>Perhaps artistic recommendations would be the most important for a student applying to selective non-auditioned BA programs like Northwestern’s. My son only applied to auditioned BFA programs, for better or worse, so other people could tell you better than I about standard procedures for students seeking acceptance into a BA theatre program.</p>

<p>Probably it is best to send artistic recommendation letters to the theatre department instead of the admissions office, after the application to the college has already been processed. You want to be sure that the theatre faculty/staff sees them and knows who is being written about.</p>

<p>In our experience, obtaining artistic recommendation letters was a challenge. Some of the artistic type people the kids might be asking are very busy, not-very-well-organized individuals. </p>

<p>Then there is the matter of confidentiality. It might be best to have the recommender mail the letter, but that’s a lot to expect. If you mail it in for the person, it’s best if it’s in a sealed envelope with their signature written over the seal. Another thing you could do is have letters of artistic recommendation sent to the school guidance counselor, and have the guidance counselor forward them to the school theatre dept. Helps to have a good guidance counselor and a good relationship with him or her.</p>

<p>Artistic recommendations should focus not so much on talent as what the student is like to work with. Easy to get along with, team player, on time, etc, etc? Drama departments are really interested in this.</p>

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My daughter went to a cyber school and applied to a number of BFA and BA schools. She used outside rec letters from playwriting teachers she had studied with at a local college and her acting coach, all through the Common Ap. When you fill out the form, you fill in the email address of the teacher and they receive an email prompt. You can also decide which college gets which recommendation letter (so, in the case of schools that explicitly only want academic recommendations, you can make sure that that is the one they get.) Some schools accept only one or two letters, some require one or two but accept more. It’s different for every school, something that you will find as you go through the Common Ap.</p>

<p>There was some overlap, but we also snail-mailed artistic recommendation letters from her acting coaches and playwrighting organization to the drama departments of most school she applied to. She also sent an artistic supplement-- e.g. a DVD of a film she made-- to certain schools. Was it helpful? Well, the first thing the auditor said to her at one audition was that he had watched the DVD. This was a “top 5” acting conservatory to which she eventually gained admission. </p>

<p>As for confidentiality of letters mailed separately: provide your recommenders with a SASE and ask them to sign across the seal. Then, you can put everything together in a single pack for each individual school (i.e., all the letters you are sending) and mail it in one larger envelope. I teach at a college and do a lot of grad school recommendations. While most of them are now online, there are some that still use printed recommendations and this is the standard procedure.</p>

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<p>Aha, thanks, Glassharmonica. I had no idea that the Common App sent in outside recommendations, sorry. Letters submitted through the Common App would go straight to admissions, though, I think.</p>

<p>I recall some confusion with the Common App where one particular school that my son applied to seemed to be requiring two letters of recommendation, but the online program for the Common App for that school would only accept one. So if you are depending on the Common App to send letters of recommendation, maybe make sure that the first email address you submit is the “best” one.</p>

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<p>Since we use the Naviance system at our high school, we have to have the guidance counsellor and one “academic” teacher do the recommendations. The letters are a way for the faculty at a high school to give their “professional” opinion as to whether or not this student is accomplished, driven, and in particular, well-rounded. In that respect, these types of recs. may not give enough info for a theatre kid who is applying to a theatre program. However most schools that I looked at say things like “at least two, but no more than three letters” or they actually state that if the student feels that information from a particular person (coach, employer, church official) is important, the student can include it. So as others said, I guess you need to read the info for all schools, but I think there is room for at least one rec from a director or theatre class instructor.</p>

<p>I got a kick out of the OP telling us that his child could get a good “review” from different adults/faculty, rather than a recommendation! LOL! Once a theatre person, always a theatre person!</p>

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<p>I guess this might be one of those things that I actually have to get there in the Common Ap. to understand it but I am having trouble squaring the post from glassharmonica with the post from Marbleheader. </p>

<p>Like Marbleheader, our school also uses Naviance. Does that create some sort of default that the only letters of recommendation that can be submitted through the Common Ap. are school teachers? Does that put us in a different situation than glassharmonica whose child went to a cyberschool? Also, I don’t understand the notion of tailoring something differently to each school through the Common Ap. How do you customize something that is supposed to be common? I’ve seen that some schools have Common Ap. supplements – is that the part you are referring to that is being customized?</p>

<p>I was trying this past weekend to go through the application to understand what was involved without actually filling in much of the information. The problem is it wouldn’t let me see what the rest of it looked like until other parts were filled in.</p>

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<p>ActingDad, probably your daughter should discuss Naviance with the school guidance counselor.</p>

<p>As I recall, when you use the Common App, as soon as you start filling it out for a specific school, the program tailors the application to that school, in terms of supplements and whatever else the school requires.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure you can fill out big chunks of it and save it until you have all the information entered - changing it along the way if necessary - and the essays are written and the student is ready to submit it.</p>

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<p>At our high school - thru Naviance - the kids pick one teacher to ask for a recommendation during junior year. That teacher, plus the guidance counselor, write the letters, and they are “electronically” delivered to the college/university, if they accept electronic submissions of letters of recs., transcripts, and the high school’s profile. It is great to be able to go on Naviance and see what documents have been sent and what’s pending (if a teacher hasn’t done the rec. yet, etc). </p>

<p>I don’t think - but I am NOT sure - that you can have additional letters passed along using Naviance, but that’s not to say you can’t use them! There are colleges in Naviance that are marked with “does not accept electronic submissions”, so there has to be a simple way of including or sending the additional recs to the school - whether you send them yourself, have the director send them. I think it is good advice to have your student ask their guidance counselor what the best way to add one or two really great theatre recs with her other letters.</p>

<p>The Common App is the same for all schools - but you’ll put the schools you want to send the app to under “my colleges” or something like that, then you can click on their supplements. This is important, because some college supplements make the kids do another essay, or answer more questions pertaining to that school. Some supplements are simple (my D’s supplement for Wesleyan was just a one pager with informational questions - name, address, etc.). So the Common App is not tailored, it is the supplements that could be really different for each school.</p>

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<p>The range of responses to this post drives home the point that you really need to scrutinize the specific directions from each school. Among the schools on my son’s current list, recommendations include: guidance counselor only; artistic teacher only; three teacher recs, one of which can be the guidance counselor; two artistic teachers only; NO artistic teachers but two academics; and more that I can’t remember right now.</p>

<p>As I’m sure most of us know by now, both the Common App and Naviance are owned by the same corporation, which also owns College Confidential. At our school–an independent school, where I teach and my son attends–we have to upload recommendations via Naviance for any Common App school. It has all changed so quickly and frequently over the last few years that I will not pretend to have complete or even accurate knowledge about the process and whether it’s universal or unique to our school. And as an arts teacher, I am usually either an extra (third) recommender or I write only for kids applying to visual arts programs. We do write additional recs for kids who are wait-listed, and my understanding is that these are submitted the old-fashioned way (snail mail) rather than via Naviance. I’ve also written numerous recs for former students who are transferring, and these are usually sent on letterhead in a sealed/signed envelope as Glassharmonica describes. </p>

<p>Despite having a reasonable amount of experience with this as a teacher, I’m in a dilemma about how to handle the second artistic rec for my own son. He’s had the same theater teacher since third grade! So he has to figure out not only whom to ask but also how to submit it. I’ll update on this thread when I find out from our college counselors how they want him to handle this. I know Hartt is one school that asks for two artistic recommendations. And as NJTheatreMom points out above, NYU-Tisch does not accept letters from arts teachers. (We’re used to this, but it still feels a bit like a slap in the face!). JMU asks kids to bring a recommendation to their audition but states explicitly that they will not read more than one. And I’m interested an issue implied by ActingDad’s questions in the original post: is it awkward to ask a faculty member from a summer pre-college program to write a generic recommendation for OTHER colleges? My son attended BUSTI and loved it, but it’s unclear to me whether he should ask any of his instructors there for a recommendation! </p>

<p>Finally, re: the Common App itself, my own experience (working with my advisees and older kids) is that the application is the same for all schools and only the supplements are different. Since my S3 is about to start the process, I guess I’ll find out first-hand if that has changed! </p>

<p>Does anyone else feel like you’re at the beginning of a very long and bumpy and terrifying roller coaster…?</p>

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<p>Just saw that Marbleheader posted while I was writing my response above. At our school you can definitely have two (or even more) teachers upload recommendations in addition to the guidance counselor. In fact, that’s the norm–we always have kids get letters from two teachers, and the college counselor’s letter is additional. For colleges that only want one teacher letter, the student should indicate which teacher’s rec to use. Still don’t know what to do about outside recommenders, though! Oh, and an aside to Marbleheader–LOVED seeing your son in the BUSTI productions. :)</p>

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<p>It was probably a red herring when I said that my daughter used a cyber school- in my state they operate just like regular public schools. This particular school did not use Naviance last year, although they will this year. So my experience for her (and my other 3 daughters) was with the Common Ap, but not Naviance. Last year, the Common Ap allowed you to send requests to multiple recommendation letter writers (teachers) and one guidance counselor. For specific schools you were able to pick which letter would be sent to which school. We found this to be a nice flexible option, as some were purely academic letter and some were artistic/academic letters, and some were artistic only. I don’t think you will have as much flexibility with Naviance.</p>

<p>In my daughter’s case, she had taken some college courses and she felt that these academic recommendations would be more valuable than recommendations from her high school teachers, so these were added via the Common Application (the teachers were sent an email prompt generated by the Common Ap.) These were among the choices she had to send to individual schools. Which rec letter was sent to which school was a decision she made on a school-by-school basis.</p>

<p>NJTheatremom, I’m sorry that I was unclear, but my daughter sent postal letters to the Theatre departments under separate cover, as a separate task. Many of the schools have online tracking systems where one can log on and track receipt of application materials. She could see that several schools had duly logged on the receipt of these letters (and some other supplementary material.) She did not send these packages to schools that specifically requested no extra material. Some schools seem very open to extra materials, some seem neutral, some discourage it. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that each school has its own specific admissions process, Common Ap or not, so you have to keep on your toes.</p>

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<p>I just checked with our college counseling office at school and Glassharmonica is correct–Naviance doesn’t let you customize the recommendations, so our counseling office will have to do that by hand. They were glad to get the heads-up early, by the way. I also just reminded my son that he’ll have to ask for his recommenders to turn in their letters early and for the counseling office to send everything out as soon as possible (as though he were applying ED) so that he can schedule auditions. Thanks to ActingDad for getting this thread started, as it prompted me to get moving myself! One of the questions in the original post had to do with whether recommendations really matter in this process. Lots of good answers have already been posted, but I just wanted to add that for schools whether the “normal” admissions office has as much say as the acting program, the recommendation can matter a lot, especially at a smaller or more individualized school. We often hear back from colleges that our teacher recommendations were a deciding factor for a borderline kid. But again, that depends on the size and nature of the college and its admissions process. If in doubt, find somebody who you know is a good writer, who will send the letter on time, and who can support your child with detailed examples, not just vague praise!</p>

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<p>Another head’s up is that some colleges <em>will</em> let you schedule auditions before the application is completed. Others want you to have a completed application. So, obviously, triage it so that the rolling admissions schools and those who want a completed application are the first on the list.</p>

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<p>NYU is one school where you can schedule auditions very early, before the application is submitted. </p>

<p>They have many, many audition slots but the most desirable dates fill up with lightning speed. If you’re interested in an NYU audition, check the website for how soon you can schedule an audition. Our year, I think it was October, but it might be earlier now.</p>