Your recs don’t have to be in English. The teacher can write in the native language. It will then need to be professionally translated into English. Ideally, the English teacher will help with this. Both the original and the translation are submitted.
Unsure on the antecedent for “they.” In almost all cases, the rec needs to be in English: the admissions office will not run through Google Translate. And neither should the teacher that does not speak English; I have not found a good Russian to English or Czech to English translation website, so I doubt that the Eastern European language the OP speaks (if different from the 2 I mentioned) has a good one.
OP should follow the steps I earlier mentioned regarding translations.
Also, especially with the student project (before it became defunct as a result of covid) and the student non-profit, I did help create some materials and programs for high school students in my city. I even have a few good topics for an essay (but I’m not sure if you mean this by an impact on the community)
Your personal statement doesn’t have to be about your impact on the community. In fact, I suspect most colleges you’re considering will have an essay that will give you another opportunity to comment on your community impact in some way.
Have the other teacher who writes the math/science rec letter work closely with the US teacher. They will NOT know how to write a letter that impresses a US adcom.
I mean, half the kids who come here have SAT scores which are over 1400-1420, which is the highest 5% of scores. The SES of most CC adults is within the range that score the highest on standardized tests. Since most “IQ” tests are just more sophisticated versions of the SATs, then it wouldn’t be surprising that many of the kid of these adults would score in that range as well.
PS. Membership in MENSA + $4.00 will get you a Caffe Latte Grande at your local Starbucks, and you may even get change (don’t forget to tip!).
Sigh. Even the “IQ tests” just correlate to some measure of perhaps “intelligence”. MENSA uses them as though they are an accurate measure of INTELLIGENCE.
I have seen too many cases in which kids improved their scores on “IQ tests” by training and studying. This has just increased my skepticism of the use of such tests for much of anything.
The college Board stopped trying to be in the business (and believe you me, it’s a business) of telling people how smart they or their kids are, based on standardized tests. Instead, they shifted to the original purpose of the “IQ” tests - how well people were performing on standardized tasks related to their education.
When I was in elementary school I was part of some child development study as a control, because my mom’s best friend was the PI. I loved it! IQ tests galore (which I really enjoyed doing), electroencephalograms, being treated like a queen for a day etc. After a few years I was disqualified from the study because my IQ was increasing steadily with time (no idea what the numbers were) and I was seriously bummed. I don’t know much about IQ testing other than it broke my little heart. My kids both tested into the GT program in our school district (testing that we did not ask for) that provided them with a grand total of zero hours of enrichment each. To me IQ testing is like solving puzzles, which I love; but intelligence is so much more than that. Just some thoughts.
My apologies for not understanding your family circumstances well from the original post. It may have been discussed.
American colleges do look for applicants who come from either first generation to attend college or low socio-economic upbringing as a way to diversify the entering class. If you have either of these qualities you have a hook.
OP is in the international bucket. That means they must be the most desirable, or maybe one of the two most desirable applicants from their country applying that particular year. First gen and LI hooks don’t work in the international bucket, in fact all but five colleges a re need aware for international applicants (and OP is solidly middle class by the standards of their country).
