I’m a junior right now so I have some time to be thinking about this but I’m curious what you guys have to say on this.
Is it more important to have decently good letters of rec from junior year teachers who teach AP classes, or amazing letters of rec from sophomore teachers who don’t teach AP classes?
Or to be specific,
one from a sophomore year teacher who teaches AP Bio and one from a sophomore teacher who teaches accelerated world history but is teaching APUSH for the first time this year and I just happen to be in that class taught by a different teacher (;A;). I talk to both teachers often and they know I am passionate about their subjects. plus there are projects I did in their classes I could bring up and how I’m working on my interests (tutoring & bio olympiad) even after being in their class.
vs.
one from a sophomore year teacher who teaches AP Bio & one from a junior year teacher who teaches some humanities AP (english or history or something). having soph year teachers is kind of sketch from what i’ve read, since they wonder why you can’t get a junior year teacher…and it’s not that i can’t, but that i’ve connected with my soph year teachers very well by comparison, and it would be easier for them to write it.
Eh, maybe it’s too early to tell, since I’ve taken less than half of the year of junior year classes…
by the way my interests are education, policy, and bio/chem…i’ve always wanted to teach but it seems that going into education immediately is rather narrow/limiting, so maybe the other two are better choices. i have to choose something that i want to teach anyway, right? which i find hard, because teachers that show they are passionate about the subject they teach tend to make me love their subjects and then there’s not, like, one subject that i absolutely love more than the rest, except that education/teaching and education policy has always interested me.
Another question: If I TA for a sophomore year teacher my senior year, does that mean anything for letters of rec other than that I will get to work with that teacher more --> potentially better relations + better letter of rec? or does it bump the grade level that I had that teacher to senior year or something?
also how exactly does the system even work? different colleges want different things, I suppose? /help i’m very clueless/
answers to these questions probably won’t change anything that I do differently (I’m still going to talk to the teachers I like talking to, regardless,) but I am curious…
that would be awesome!! i don’t go on this site very often though.