<p>I keep reading posts (from parents, and sometime students) that say that the applicant had (or will have) fantastic / terrific / amazing letters of recommendation. </p>
<p>My D has asked several teachers that know her well, and have recommended her for awards and/or have trusted her with tasks or projects. I'm sure they will say she's smart, reliable, contributes to class -- i.e., a "good" letter. But that is not the same as having confidence that the letters will be "fantastic" / "terrific" / "amazing". Specifically, that's not the same as knowing the letters will be good enough to help her stand out in a competitive applicant pool.</p>
<p>How do you know how good your letters will be? Do you get to see the letters? Does the teacher tell you what s/he wrote? Do you know the teachers personally, and know them to be effusive? Have you overheard them talking to others about recommendations?</p>
<p>Also, is there any way to know how your letters compare to other applicants' letters?</p>
<p>Is there any actual objectivity here, or is it just that some people are highly self-confident?</p>
<p>Mihcal, I think we’re at the same stage in this process so I can’t offer any personal experiences but just want to say I will be checking back for other responses. I’m interested in how kids got to read their own letters; that would certainly be so interesting to me, but I can’t imagine that it ever happens in S’ school. He thought a long time about who to ask for recommendations and worked through his options with his GC. I know one of his selections will write a fantastic rec; his reputation in general is as a great writer who only agrees to write for certain students. He has known S is many settings over the last 3 years which I think is key to a great rec. The other recommender will be S’ 11th grade English teacher; the guy is inscrutable, but again, we’re told he wouldn’t agree to write unless he was fully invested in the kid.</p>
<p>I’ve hijacked this a little, Mihcal, sorry! But I’ll be back; thanks for starting this thread.</p>
<p>The short answer is mostly you won’t know. However sometimes the teacher will show you the letter. This was the case for my younger son who asked a math teacher to write a letter. My younger son got an interesting letter from his junior year pre-calc teacher which said that although he didn’t have the best grade in the class, unlike other students in the class my son really understood the material rather than just memorizing formulas. (My son famously ran out of time on tests figuring out formulas from scratch or other ways of doing problems because he couldn’t remember what he’d been taught.) I’d say that recommendation was as good a one as a he could have gotten, though some schools may not have felt it good enough.</p>
<p>He did not see his other letter (from a history teacher his strength), but the teacher asked every student to supply a sample paper from the course, a reminder of the AP grade and final grade, and an essay about what their favorite text in the course had been and what they were hoping to get out of college. I think the kids who ran the gauntlet got excellent letters!</p>
<p>Our school also has a system where you ask a teacher junior year for a letter that just goes to the GC. My son used his orchestra teacher and the letter (while nice) was so lame we knew we didn’t need to bother to get him letters for colleges. </p>
<p>For my older son we eventually saw one of the outside letters when he asked for another letter from the same professor for a school scholarship from someone who’d already written college letters. This professor was too busy to rewrite the letter and asked us to rework it and send it back to him. We were pretty blown away by what he’d said. It was definitely a “fantastic” letter.</p>
<p>Most letters are mediocre, and predictable. Teachers have to write so many of them, that many of them use templates and say the same old tired stuff. It is recommended and some schools make the kids do this, to write out what you want in your letter so that the teacher doesn’t get writer’s block and can come up with some examples of what makes you so special and can comment on those things. Think about having to write 20-40 recommendations of kids you really don’t know that well outside of the classroom. Having a “cheat sheet” makes all of the difference in the quality of the letter. Otherwise, the person is stuck with generalities unless s/he knows the student very well.</p>
<p>Letters of recommendation matter a lot more at the graduate level than they do for undergraduate admissions. In fact, many schools like the UC’s don’t even ask for them. I was told by an ad-com that if your D goes to a small private school, the colleges have higher expectations for very detailed and personalized letters, but they are aware that public school teachers have limited time and resources. I think it would be extremely unusual for an application to “stand out in a competative applicant pool” based on LORs. </p>
<p>Personally, I wouldn’t stress too much about this part of the application. It sounds like your D is going to get excellent letters.</p>
<p>Sometimes you’re lucky enough to have clicked with a teacher well enough to get an amazing letter-- “Best student of my career” or some such. I think you can usually guess who might write such a letter, and often enough they’ll show you, because usually you’d have a pretty close relationship with that person. </p>
<p>And then-- there are some teachers who just write better than others. Often the GC will know who they are and can help steer you, if you’re deciding who to ask. There’s a teacher at D’s school who is just extremely articulate and appreciative-- she teaches Jr. AP English and I suspect she’s in that position for a reason-- her recommendations really stand out. If you’ve had a parent-teacher conference and the teacher really seemed to get your kid and articulate why…or if a paper has come back with glowing, thoughtful comments, think about asking that person. </p>
<p>I know it’s recommended to give a resume and “brag sheet” etc. to the teachers-- our school even has a form-- I filled the form out carefully. All 3 teachers D asked for recs refused to take the form.</p>
<p>And really, how are adcoms going to ascertain the difference between Unknown Mrs. Smith, the English teacher at Happyville High, who says that Joey is a really great student and an all-around good guy and Unknown Mr. Jones, the math teacher at Smallville High, who says that Susie is a terrific student and nice girl too? These people are complete strangers to adcoms; they are nothing more than names on paper to them.</p>
<p>At my kid’s HS, each teacher writes a narrative in the report card, three times a year. That made it easy. I think my kid has a pretty good idea what the letter will be like.</p>
<p>You just ask teachers who you know are good writers and who adore you. I had an ex-teacher write one for me. Although I didn’t get to see it ever, I know it was excellent because, according to him, “the only thing I didn’t say was that two of your former teachers would have gladly adopted you.” He was a really great guy and we had the best teacher-student relationship ever, so I wouldn’t be surprised if my LOR made me stand out.</p>
<p>My kid had a mentor in an academic-type EC. He was sort of a coach for it and he coached kids from a couple of different high schools. One of them was an elite private independent school in NYC. A student from that school applied to his alma mater, a top LAC, and asked him to write a LOR. He wasn’t sure what to do, so he called the college adviser at that school and asked for suggestions. Adviser set up a meeting and asked him to prepare a draft of a LOR and bring it in. He did and she made lots of suggestions as to what to include, what to delete, etc. Part of her advice was to include negative things. No student is perfect and when a teacher admits the short comings, the praise is more credible. She also got him to include specific examples illustrating the student’s strong points. </p>
<p>He mailed off the letter. He got another request. He drafted another letter, again the college adviser reviewed it, but this time, he had the idea and she recommended fewer changes. </p>
<p>Then a kid he coached from a public school asked for a LAC to a college that wasn’t his alma mater. He called the GC, who essentially blew him off and told him to write whatever he felt like writing. So, he sat down and wrote the sort of letter the independent counselor had suggested. The student was accepted—much rejoicing. </p>
<p>About a week or so later, the mentor received a letter from the dean of admissions at the LAC involved. It said that he wanted to thank the mentor for writing the letter and to let him know that the letter was what lead to the admission of the student. He said that unfortunately the letters the LAC got from the public school involved amounted to little more than he’s a good kid who did very well in my course. The mentor’s letter had made the kid into a real person, not just a list of statistics. Based on those statistics, he was a borderline case. The mentor’s letter had made him into a flesh and blood person and convinced the committee that he was precisely the kind of kid who would flourish at this LAC. So, thanks for the letter–it really is why he got in. If any other kids from X high school whom you coach apply to this LAC, please write to us again. You gave us more insight into what this applicant was like as a person than his high school did. We wish we could get a letter like yours for every applicant. </p>
<p>I don’t think the dean of admission wrote that letter just to flatter the coach. I think it was sincere. LORs MATTER.</p>
<p>We read D2´s rec letters from her history and english teachers for her summer program applications. I was very impressed with those letters because they were very personal. For every praise they gave to D2, they had an example to demontrate it.</p>
<p>Please don´t take it that I am trying to show off here, but it is hard to do it without giving real examples. </p>
<p>In one rec it said that D2 enjoyed learning for the sake of learning and always tried to improve her writing skills. She showed that by going to see her English teacher after class to discuss all comments he made of her paper, even though she already had the highest score. </p>
<p>When the teacher said D2 was a deep thinker and often had different views than kids in class, the teacher cited the book they were reading, topic they were discussing, what D2´s point view was, and the teacher pointed out why it was an interesting view. </p>
<p>D2 was applying to this summer program which was to study a very specific topic. Her teacher actually referrenced a paper she wrote for the class, and discussions she participated in, and because of that he felt D2 would be an invaluable member to their program.</p>
<p>D2 decided on who she wanted to ask to write her summer program recs. In speaking with her GC at school, she said they were excellent recs. I think kids know how well teachers know them and whether they would get a good rec or not. We won´t get to read D2´s college recs, but we hope they will be just as good.</p>
I would not usually do this. I would read every comment and consider whatever it said, and if the new perspective intrigued me, I might go home and look for a critical essay on the topic that I hadn’t encountered during my research. But it wouldn’t occur to me to carry my paper to the teacher’s desk and talk about it in person. I would assume that the teacher had better things to do (or wouldn’t be interested in a discussion–probably true) and scurry off to my next class.</p>
<p>I guess my question is this. Is outstanding performance (interesting ideas, participation in class, good writing, etc.) enough for an outstanding recommendation–one that would impress an admissions committee? Or is real assertiveness and out-of-class contact what these committees are looking for?</p>
<p>Basically, have I blown it?</p>
<p>I am going to have a nervous breakdown if I don’t stop reading these forums.</p>
<p>My son had teachers write LORs for summer programs and his current summer internship. I would guess that both teachers wrote fantastic letters. They both gave examples to back up their opinions and showed why they believed he would “fit” what they were seeking. They also explicitly stated how he stood apart from his peers. They didn’t just speak of academics but also discussed his personality and how he interacted with his classmates. They gave a whole picture of who he is. As a parent, it made my eyes tear up to read what they thought of him. Those letters did not seem the least bit generic. I think that’s a big difference between good and fantastic LORs.</p>
<p>Sometimes the students will see the LOR, sometimes not. To me it seems a factor that you can’t control very much, but the earlier the teacher is asked the better. One school of thought is that English teachers express their thoughts better, but I suspect a colleges are accustomed to all sorts of styles. </p>
<p>We had DS provide his LOR writers with resume for completeness. Not sure that was a good idea. One teacher quoted a lot of those items (which the college already knew). The more valuable parts were where the teacher explained that attributes she noticed in class that set him apart from his peers.</p>
<p>Daisie, I wouldn’t worry, my kids wouldn’t have talked to the teacher in a million years either. Not because they are shy, but because they consider such behavior sucking up to the teacher. Sigh. My older son’s AP Biology teacher mentioned that every time there was a lull in class (labs finished early for example), other kids would be working to get extra credit, not my kid he had his nose in a computer theory book. I actually think he might have written a good letter, but he used his physics teacher instead. I did see the letter from his AP Comp Sci teacher who commented on his creativity which I thought was nice.</p>
<p>I think the point is that the teacher didn’t think D2 was sucking up, and he didn’t think D2 needed to do that. Teachers do what they do because they want to teach, they like it when students are interested in what they are teaching. For college rec, D2 is going to ask her physics teacher even though she is a humanities student. He doesn’t speak/write English too well, but he tells us she is his best student (D2 thinks that’s quite sad).</p>
<p>I think it is very important for kids who want to get good grades (and good recs) to make it a practice to meet with their teachers outside class. This was a lesson my son learned early on.</p>
<p>The colleges are aware of the quality of recs they get from most schools. I’ve known stellar kids who have been accepted to the very top colleges despite generic, uninspiring recommendations. Yeah, the parents saw the recs after the fact and could only shake their heads. </p>
<p>A lot of times, the top schools look for certain wordings like “the best student, I’ve ever had” or other superlative that gives an indication of where that kid is, rather than looking for well written personal recommendations.</p>
<p>You don’t typically know what the LORs say, unless the school that received it then shares parts of it with the student. This occurred with two of D’s acceptance letters. One college quoted something that just made me shake my head- didn’t seem like it was a positive at all (and I am betting it was from her less than stellar GC). The quote in the other letter, from the school she will attend in the fall, made it clear that not only did the recommending teacher “get” my D, so did the college.</p>