Two of my teachers who said that they’d write rec letters for me told me to send them a list of information about me.
What should I include on there besides academic stats, extracurriculars (and the explanation of what i’ve done), summer/work experiences, and my honors/awards?
Should I include my intended major? Any other information you think could help the teacher in writing a solid rec. letter?
In some ways it’s a brag sheet. Don’t be shy. List all the things you’re proud of that your teachers may not know about you that you’ve done, EC and otherwise. I don’t think you need to include intended major since their role is more about championing you as a great contributor to a community.
Having gone thru 2 rounds very recently with my 2 kids, the most important thing is to pick recommenders who know you well and who really like you and want to go to bat for you.
In one case, we didn’t know better and thought we had to pick a teacher in Economics because my daughter wanted to major in that subject. Later we learned he wrote a luke warm rec, and we should have picked her English teacher who thought her writing was magical, even though she didn’t intend on majoring in English.
Most teachers want a “brag sheet”- what have you done? what do you care about?
You can include your intended major, and then they can speak to how your work in their classes will prepare you for that major.
BTW, Admissions will get a list of ECs on the Common App, and your transcript, so I would focus more on things they can’t get from other sources. What makes you awesome?
Remind them of anecdotes in their specific classes where you feel you shined or improved greatly or engaged the classroom tremendously. Anecdotes are what stand out in LoRs. Having your math teacher recount the fact that you did A, B and C extracurriculars is wasted space.
Yonce reminded me that you can use a rec to shore up some other aspect of your application that may be weak. My daughter had a near perfect Math score, but her verbal and writing scores was slightly more anemic. She asked her English teacher to say something about her writing and how hard she worked on it because she thought written communication was so important even though she wanted to be a mathematician.