I am currently in the process of adding my letters of recommendation to the Common Application. In many of the college’s recommender tab, it says teacher recommendation. However, I have an amazing recommender who, unfortunately, is not a teacher. Instead of not using her as a resource, do you think it would be okay for me to put her under the teacher recommendation tab although she is not a teacher? Her recommendation would be worth 100 of the most amazing teacher recommendations, and I feel like her opinion would benefit me more than any of my teachers. If I should not use her, I do have other teacher recommenders.
The common app in the Manage Recommenders section I believe allows you to choose both Teacher Recommender and Other Recommender. However, a number of colleges that want recommendation letters want them only from teachers so you should probably check the particular colleges’ sites to see if you are even permitted to submit additional recommendation letters (if they do not want other recommender letters then sending one could likely accomplish nothing because it won’t even be in the file that those who decide admissions see). In any event, I would not put a non-teacher recommendation in the teacher recommendation place in the common app if there is an other recommender section.
@drusba I am starting to get really nervous because one of the two teacher recommenders I asked is not getting back to me, and I need her recommendation submitted by November 1st. Do you have any tips for me on what I should do for that? I have other teachers I could ask, but I do not want to go to them as a last resort.