NYSC - who's recommendation should I use?

Pre-College Issues Summer Programs
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<p>National</a> Youth Science Camp
Part of the application process involves sending a recommendation from either a teacher or a research mentor, and I need some advice about who to ask.</p>

<p>Teacher 1: Taught me for an honors biology last year, also the advisor of a service club that I co-founded which focuses on improving the science education of and/or sparking interest in science in elementary age children. We bring teams of high school students to local elementary schools and perform simple experiments with them, the kids love it :)
She has a positive impression of me, but she's not the most experienced teacher, so I'm not sure how good her rec-writing skills are. Also, I already asked her to write like 9 recs for all the colleges I'm applying to.</p>

<p>Teacher 2: Has never taught me in a class. She's the advisor for Science Club, the amalgam of all the science competition teams at my school (i.e, Science Olympiad, Science Bowl, etc), and I feel like she knows me very well outside of school. Plus I'm in her room so often that she can probably speak to my excitement for science better than anyone else. However, she's never taught me in a class (oh did I mention that already?).
Also, she is a very experienced teacher, and a really, really nice person - always looks for the best in people. She wrote the rec for the guy who got in from my school last year.
She didn't write any of my college recs, so I would not feel guilty asking her hahaha.</p>

<p>Research Mentor: Worked with her for 6 weeks over the summer, not really a long time at all. However, during those 6 weeks, we worked together a LOT. I'm confident that she had a good impression of me and can at least speak to my cleverness and scientific curiosity (is that redundant?) And since this is a science program, I thought maybe it would give me an edge if I used a research mentor's rec.
She's already written a bunch of recs for the colleges I applied to. However, she's the sort of person who would save the document, so I'm 99% sure she still has the letter she wrote - perhaps she could just re-use that?</p>

<p>What do you think? Keep in mind both the probably quality of their recommendations and the fact that I have to ask them for one (and I've already caused teacher 1 and research mentor some trouble, since I'm applying to so many colleges).</p>

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<p>Wow, I just realized that I used the wrong “whose”. Clearly I am not an English person hahaha, sorry about that.</p>

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<p>go with teacher 2. imo it’s quite difficult to stand out to your mentor next to phd students. Generally, extra curricular stuff > academic stuff for these programs.</p>

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<p>Thanks :slight_smile:
You’re sure it won’t be against the rules or anything to submit the rec of a teacher with whom I’ve never had a class?
Oh, I forgot to mention, if it matters at all in this case, that I’m the president of Science Club - I just realized that it probably looks pretty creeper to say that I spend a lot of time in her room, without that tidbit of information.
And also, I worked in a fairly large lab, so my mentor WAS a PhD student - what she’s been doing for college recs is writing together with the PI of the lab, and then putting his more impressive name on it. So I wasn’t actually working under the [very busy] PI; I don’t think there would be an issue of my not standing out among all of my mentor’s other proteges, because I was the only one haha.</p>