Letter of Recommendation Question

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hey everyone!</p>

<p>So I've been working through my transfer essays and I was wondering: if a good friend of mine, a professor, taught at my college of choice for over 5 years (is now teaching at a different college), could I ask him for a recommendation letter, separately from the required recs from the two profs at my current college? Would the college consider it at all or is there really no way of answering that?</p>

<p>Oh, and good luck everyone, wherever you might be applying!</p>

2

<p>Depends on the college. You should shoot them an email and ask if they will accept additional letters. They’ll be honest.</p>

3

<p>thanks for the reply! what do you think Columbia’s gonna think of that? I’ll call the office of admissions later today then.</p>

4

<p>On their website C has a pretty explicit discussion of supplemental materials they’d like to see.</p>

5

<p>@entomom I could be wrong, but they don’t seem to be discussing extra recommendations? I only see creative and performance supplementary pieces, science etc pieces and this: “Please note that we specifically ask that you do not send collections of award certificates and the like and explicitly direct that you refrain from submitting your application in binders or folders.” What I was unclear about is whether an extra recommendation fell into that category.</p>

6

<p>^Exactly.</p>

<p>[Supplementary</a> Materials | Columbia Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/apply/first-year/supplementary-materials]Supplementary”>Supplementary Materials | Columbia Undergraduate Admissions)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>The first sentence and the lack of a following description of how to submit supplemental LORs should tell you something about how receptive they are to them.</p>

<p>In addition, is this prof more than a friend, have they taught you in a course, mentored or supervised you on a project? The fact that the prof taught at C at one time will not impress adcoms, rather it’s what is said about you that is important.</p>

<p>Listen, you’re going to call the school, that’s the best thing to do.</p>

7

<p>No, just a friend, met through a close friend of mine. I see your point. I’ll ring them up to see if they advise strongly against it or discourage it in any way…Decisions, decisions. Haha, but thanks for helping! :)</p>