Hi, so I’m going to be a senior and am pretty concerned about my letters of recommendation when applying to colleges because I don’t really have a close relationship with any of my teachers. I come from a really big school where the teachers don’t really care about their students and I made the mistake of never truly getting to know any of them. I went abroad my junior year and that changed, I have great relationships with those teachers and am hoping to get a letter of rec from my english teacher (even though I want to apply to top ranked engineering schools… would this hurt me?) So I’m looking for advice and trying to decide what to do. I’ve worked so hard throughout highschool and have outstanding grades, test scores, and ECs and it would really suck if this is what stopped me from achieving my dreams. Are letters of rec from someone who is not a teacher an option? I think I saw it on the common app but I have never heard of anyone who did this.
I think getting a letters from your abroad program would be fine. D20’s college admission counselor suggested one recommendation from a STEM class and one from another core class (English, Foreign Language, Social Studies) and both should be from teachers you had as a junior or will have as a senior. My D had one from her 11th grade history teacher who taught her 12th grade sociology elective and one from her 10th grade math teacher who taught her again in 12th.
I’d say you ought to get a LOR from your school counselor and at least one teacher. In terms of your local teachers as long as you did well academically you should be good. If not asking the teachers from abroad shouldn’t hurt. Admisssoin officers don’t spend more than 7 seconds on your application so don’t overthink it.
Mixed up the 5-7 sec thing with the resume reading. Regardless universities get thousands of applications annually so yeah don’t overthink
Please go through each college website that you are planning to apply and find out what kind of rec leters that they are asking for. For ex. MIT specifically asks for two rec letters, one from the Science teacher and other from the humanities (English, Foreign language, Social studies etc). Hence the requirement differs from college to college.
Colleges typically request a letter from your counselor, separate from teachers.
If a school requests LOR from two teachers, sending one teacher and one from someone else would likely be an incomplete application.
Ummmm…no.