Good idea. For what it’s worth, he had no issues with it on Saturday test days. Only the school-day test was a problem. I am guessing the proctors at a Saturday exam get more training than the teachers running the rooms at school do.
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So we sent his score to National Merit and 3 in-state schools. The really weird thing is that we didn’t have to send last week’s score. We could pick. So we picked his 1520 from November and sent only that score to 2 schools. We sent last week’s and the 1520 to another, because they clearly said they will only look at the highest (and don’t super score).
I was really surprised we could send Novembers for free by doing it this way.
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Great point @Thorsmom66 @Luanne - follow up question on timing to ask teachers in May for LOR. wondering if it is better to wait until after finals are done in May to ask teachers for LORs ? Any pros and cons of asking when the current course / exams are still going on ( hope it doe snot annoy the teachers and influence/impact current year interaction.
Our school has a rule against asking for recs in the spring. They only allow requests starting at the beginning of senior year. You may want to check with the counselor regarding your school’s protocol.
I agree that you should check with your school’s GC - I assume every high school has their own way of doing LORs. To be honest, I was a little surprised that our high school asks the kids to get those lined up at the end of junior year.
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Our school counselor recommended that our daughter request LOR from teachers in May since her applications would be submitted starting in August for her major (theatre tech). This wouldn’t be the case for other majors.
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Our GC suggests letters be requested now so that teachers will be able to write letters over the summer months and spread out their workload.
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So new question: To how many schools will your child apply?
D22 has already asked a couple teachers if they’d be willing to write LOR back in March; and had one teacher from sophomore year out of the blue offer to write her a LOR. Our HS GC said it was a good idea to ask now before the “popular” teachers (I don’t know who those are) get swamped in the fall. Somewhere online there’s a ‘brag sheet’ that can be downloaded and filled out for the teacher so that the teacher knows what all the student has been involved with over the years, just to help fill in the gaps in the teacher’s knowledge of the student. Good for the student as well, to help remind themselves of things they might want to mention in their applications.
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We’re probably headed to at around 10 schools. DD22 is set on applying to 4 reaches, we have two safeties agreed to, she has three matches selected and I think there are two more she should look at. So 9 to 11 as of now.
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My son is at three target to somewhat reach schools. We’ll hear back from a key one around December 15 and hit a safety target if that isn’t an acceptance. Might need to go with that one by November 1 if we need that date for scholarships.
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No idea how many schools at this point. I bet it will turn out to be more than necessary just because it’s the first kid and we’re learning.
How many teacher recommendations are usually needed? We looked at one college on his list and it doesn’t look like they require any. Is this typical?
D19 applied to 15 schools, and that was excessive, and very her. To be fair, we made her tack on 2 safety schools for the very reason @Luanne mentioned - she was our first, and we really just didn’t know how accurate “reach” “target” and “safety” really was. S22 looks like he’ll be applying to 8 or 9 and that’s including the 2 extra safeties we’re tacking on just in case. Our goal is that he’ll be all done with applications by Thanksgiving, which is what our daughter did and it was great. She had already heard from a couple of schools heading into Christmas break when a lot of her friends were gearing up to start. She was exhausted and so happy to be done!
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Hmm. Odd that no letters were requested. This is totally a guess: Do they accept Common Ap? Maybe the letters are included as part of Common Ap so they didnt feel a need to explicitly state it?
Purdue, Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Minnesota and NC State don’t appear to require letters of recommendation.
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D22 had a list of 14 but it is rapidly shrinking as we eliminate schools that don’t seem to be good at accommodating food allergies. Based on this criteria, there are only 6 for sure she will apply to. She still has a few more to research though.
No common app. It’s Michigan Tech. No essay and looks like a simple application. He hasn’t done it, but I was just poking around looking for info on teacher recommendations. How to Apply | Future First-Year Applicants | Michigan Tech Admissions
Michigan State doesn’t require them either: How to apply | First-year applicants | Michigan State University
We settled on 7 (or, how I call it 6+1:). With plus 1 being MIT, just to eliminate future regrets not applying to any Ivies (mostly on my side), my D22 could care less.
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Yes! It’s hard to actually know what are targets and safeties and really have a good feel for it now. I’ve looked at data but I don’t know how kids from our high school do at various colleges. He should be National Merit so will add a couple colleges with good merit from that as well. Plus most of the state schools aren’t open to tour so as of now he doesn’t have an idea of what he likes or not. I hope we can narrow it down this summer.
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S22 is targeting two schools for Early Action. Admission to either one and he’s done. Otherwise, an additional 6-8 schools.