<p>My daughter participated in a summer camp that had a scholarship component. Both a teacher (who she had for 2 years) and an administrator nicely wrote her recommendations. Unfortunately, they requested a resume from her and essentially copied it in their letters. (luckily grades and her own letter provided a bit better support and she got the scholarship). This summer she asked another teacher for a college recommendation and while his was better than a list of her accomplishments it was very long and very repetitive. Her teachers this year are all new to her but I guess she could ask one of them later in the semester. Any suggestions about approaching the summer writer.</p>
<p>Why do you say unfortunately requested a resume?
In my experience it is very helpful for those writing recommendations to have an updated list of students accomplishments and awards.
Generally students don’t see a copy of their recommendations as they go directly to the school or if the student is mailing the packet as one- then in a signed& sealed envelope.</p>
<p>My Ds have asked the supervisor of their EC and two teachers for reqs - one science teacher & one humanities. I wouldn’t dream of approaching the teacher afterwards about the req unless they said something that was untrue.</p>
<p>get several letters- D’s always gave them a resume to help write the letters- also rarely saw them. As much I would like to think otherwise- unless the recommendations are bad- I am not so sure they read them all that much at the admissions. D once called a very high tier school about a missing letter and was worried it would get there late- the admissions person said “well, it’s only a recommendation letter”!</p>
<p>Most teachers require a student resume to make sure that they include specifics about the student. I am surprised that you were able to read them. D1 had a teacher who refused to write recommendations unless the students waived the right to read them.</p>
<p>Agree with emeraldkitty – do not approach letter writer. I don’t think your situation is so unusual. In fact, I think it is common. I think the letter writers are somewhat obligated to stay credible, and if they say every single student is the “best ever” well then, are they really the best ever? Also, they get a lot of these requests. I have gotten many requests to write letters when I was a college professor. It takes a lot of time to write them, and little reminders of what the student did (like the project worked on and dates) really help. Supplying a resume without even being asked is considered polite and somewhat standard practice. (Just wait – if your daughter stays in academia long enough the time will surely come when someday someone asks her to draft her own recommendation letter and let them sign/edit! I think that is awful, but it has happened to me once and to almost everyone else I know.)</p>
<p>Also, isn’t there a waiver somewhere saying that you would like your letters to not be seen by you? (as in Emeraldkitty’s response above.) These are considered to carry more weight because then the recipient knows they were not tailored to the student’s wishes or had negative things withheld.</p>
<p>Instead of approaching the letter writer, I would suggest a prompt thank-you note to the teacher.</p>
<p>lisa128,</p>
<p>It took three attempts to get the right music letter of recommendation for my son. His violin teacher wrote a short LOR at first. It had mistakes in it. I then kindly gave her some guidelines and asked if she could write it again. She did and while it was a lot better, it was still really bland. He didn’t use it but never told her. We then asked a good friend who had worked with him as a musician to write it. She also is a very educated teacher and her letter was right on the money.</p>
<p>My son had a total of four LORs and one internal (written by someone working at a particular school) LOR. We eventually saw two of the LORs, the violin one and another one because he needed to get more copies for scholarships and these didn’t need to be unopened.</p>
<p>And definitely write thank-yous for all LORs.</p>
<p>Can you ask a guidance counselor at the school about which teachers write better recommendations? My oldest D asked a favorite teacher for one, who then showed it to her and asked her opinion. She of course showed it to me, and it was not well written, so I suggested a few edits! For the next kids I have asked around before the they asked for letters. Usually the GATE teacher and/or GCs know who writes well.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. The first two we saw were written for a summer camp scholarship. I said unfortunately re the resume b/c both the admin and the teacher (who knows her well) just cited her various leadership activities and sports without creating a real profile of what she is like as a student. I know both have a positive view of her but it didn’t come across. The rec from the summer was read by us and I told my D that if she wanted to use his lor she would have to indicate that she had had access to it. His rec went beyond the litany of accomplishments the others had provided but was so repetitive that it came across as much too much. I will ask the counselor and other parents abt who to make a request from.</p>
<p>Once again I’ll toss in my opinion that one should never waive their right to see a letter of recommendation written on their behalf. I know that administrators, teachers and more than a few parents disagree with me, but a cherished and honorable teacher of mine gave me that advice when I was a lad. Sorry, but in my view students should use discretion and common sense when deciding whom to ask to write a recommendation and the author should have the gumption to decline if he or she is uncomfortable with the student retaining the right to access. In any event, to avoid an awkward moment teachers whom really don’t want to do it for a particular student tend to drag their feet anyway, hoping that the poor sap will get the hint and go away.</p>
<p>I liked this advice when mine were going through the process. Note the bit about resumes!</p>
<p> Without your input, a teacher is likely to use a stock recommendation letter. It will convey the usual impersonal platitudes and descriptive phrases like “passionate about history,” dedicated student and contributed to class discussion. Admissions will read it once, stick it in your file and won’t give you any + points or smiley faces because of it.
A resume is better than no input, but only because the sentence inserted in the stock letter that talks about your participation in soccer and orchestra will confirm the teacher is talking about you and not your interchangeable classmate!
The most valuable input you can give a teacher is right there on your storyboard! Because every piece of your application should add something new to the story of who you are and what you bring to a community, figure out which 2-3 pieces of the story Teacher #1 can tell, e.g., scientific curiosity, research skills and leadership. Go through the same exercise with Teacher #2 to be sure there’s no overlap and that you’ve assigned the right passions, skills, traits, etc. to the right teacher! Don’t forget: A teacher rec can both highlight a positive and shore up a perceived weakness, e.g., you haven’t held traditional leadership positions but led a significant class project–there’s your missing leadership!
What does “excellent research skills” tell the reader about you? Anecdotes bring adjectives to life! Write brief accounts (1-3 sentences) of true classroom events highlighting the key one or two points you’re asking each teacher to make. Ask a parent or other person who has no knowledge of the events to read what you wrote and tell you what they learned about you from each anecdote. If an anecdote doesn’t work “as is” or with revision, come up with something else.**
Meet with your teacher, explain the theme of your app and tell him or her you particularly want colleges to know A, B and C about you (the key points you assigned to that teacher). “It would mean a lot to me if you could tell those parts of my story. I thought of these examples from class–what do you think?”</p>
<p>**As a poster mentioned above, some teachers are so busy or such poor writers (or both) that they will “cut and paste” anything you give them. So I always reminded my kids to be sure whatever they gave their teachers was well-written!</p>
<hr>
<p>OP, this approach obviously requires a careful choice of writer! Getting your GC’s help in that regard is a good idea–they’ve seen it all! And maybe one of those past summer program/scholarhsip writers really IS the right person for the job, but just needs to be primed along the lines above?</p>
<p>Good luck. :)</p>
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<p>I don’t think it really matters so much for law school, since admission is so numbers-driven, and I can’t speak at all to medical school, but most Ph.D. admissions committees in my corner of academia consider letters without the waiver to be pretty worthless. Letters are important and are used to convey critical information. If we* don’t have faith that the letter writer has the freedom to be truly candid (and we don’t have that faith without the waiver) then the letter is more or less disregarded. </p>
<p>*As I am a SLACFac and not a R1Fac, I don’t read Ph.D. admissions applications. I do, however, read applications for TT jobs and the same basic rule applies.</p>
<p>TXArtemis, love your approach, though I’m not sure my kids would have had the courage to do what you suggest. My younger son’s APUSH teacher asked for the following information from every student for whom he wrote a recommendation:</p>
<ol>
<li>Reminder of grade in the course</li>
<li>Reminder of grade on the AP</li>
<li>A graded copy of one of the research papers</li>
<li>A short statement about where you were applying and why you had chosen those colleges</li>
<li>A paragraph about what your favorite text in the class had been and why </li>
<li>Anything else you thought he should know about you (resume etc.)</li>
</ol>
<p>We didn’t see the teacher’s letter, but we are pretty confident he had the materials to write a good one.</p>
<p>“Anecdotes bring adjectives to life!”</p>
<p>I just got a jangling resounding flashback to my 6th grade English teacher in her tight, short brown herringbone skirt and red pumps.</p>
<p>The summer before junior year, DS and I created a resume/brag sheet. It listed his accomplishments then had a page with stories, favorite class and why, 5 words to describe, goals, most important activity at school, etc. He gave it to 5 teachers for recs (he asked for some for college, others for scholarship apps. Of the letters that he received, all used the additional info and all letters were better than the stock ones described by some family members and friends for their own kids. More than one teacher said they were happy with the additional info as it made it easier to know where to focus. DS is a bit o a joker/class clown and she was afraid to mention it until she saw that he mentioned his ability to put people at ease through humor was what he listed as his biggest strength. Sure beat calling him out for cracking jokes.</p>
<p>This happened to S last year. He attended what I might call a “rurban” high school (large-ish school in the middle of nowhere) where the most ambitious students typically apply to UT or Texas A&M and the others end up attending a “compass point” or a community college. Teachers don’t get much experience writing letters of recommendation in support of applications to Common App schools. We’d read that an application committee would already have a copy of his activities resume, so they wouldn’t want to see it regurgitated in an LOR. We agreed he’d need to approach a teacher with whom he felt comfortable discussing this.</p>
<p>The first teacher smiled, nodded, and asked for an activities resume, anyway. Even though S indicated he intended to sign the waiver, the teacher let him see it. It was terrible. He copied multiple items from the resume, yet still managed to make several mistakes! The very little bit of narrative stopped just short of “… and even though X had my class immediately after marching band, I never smelled him once.” We decided this one was unusable.</p>
<p>I can’t remember exactly how he approached the next teacher. He may have taken a paragraph or two from one of the admissions books we’d read. Judging from the result, she understood because she produced a very good letter.</p>
<p>I had the discussion with his counselor myself. She had the advantage of being involved with the applications of the handful of students over the years that had aspirations beyond the state line. I almost cried when I read her letter. I don’t know how she managed to know my kid at that level of detail out of a class of about 450, but she nailed it.</p>
<p>He was admitted everywhere he applied including U Chicago, Northwestern U (where he’ll attend), U Michigan, and U Rochester.</p>
<p>I think the bottom line is that the kid (with parental assistance, if necessary) needs to be up-front with the teacher at the time of the request if there is any doubt that the teacher isn’t familiar with what’s expected from an LOR for the caliber school to which s/he is applying. Best of luck to your D!</p>
<p>@SteveC – oh gosh, that is inexcusable about the smelling. Sounds like you followed a smart course of action.</p>
<p>@LakeWashington #9 – I understand what you are saying, but it is not the letter writer’s feelings that are of concern. It is the recipient who may care. A college may find a letter that was written with access waived more trustworthy/reliable than one that was written with access not waived.</p>
<p>LBowie wrote:
No, no. :o He “stopped just short of saying …”</p>
<p>Oh, gotcha. Sorry – read too fast!!</p>
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<p>I just wanted to point out this advice specifically, because I think it’s very good, and because someone recently started a thread asking if that was an acceptable thing to do, and most people replied no. Honestly, I think a lot of parents on CC are very clueless about high schools that are not private or upper middle class. At my lower middle class, suburban high school, most people didn’t apply to colleges that asked for recommendations, and consequently, most teachers did not have experience writing recommendations. Many teachers even wrote form recommendations, but it’s not really possible to know unless you waive you right. If anyone has any advice on how to spot a teacher that writes sloppy recs, I’m sure that would be useful to many.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned grad school admissions, which often relies heavily on recommendations - well, college professors have much more experience and a greater understanding of the importance of recommendations, considering that they needed them for grad school apps, job apps, and may have even served on admissions or hiring committees. This is completely different from a high school teacher who in many cases may not understand how to write a letter of recommendation, or what colleges are looking for in letters.</p>
<p>So many good ideas. Thank you all. The school my D attends is well regarded in the area but like the last poster, the majority of applicants go on to state schools and only a very few attend more selective private colleges/universities. Im thinking this is why the rec’s were a bit problemmatic. On tours this summer, many schools indicated they require a GC rec too…She and my D have only spoken 1 x a year to go over “business”. (I’ve been present at every meeting and have been amazed at how little prep she would have done beforehand…she’d ask my DD if she thought she could handle the next class in a series when DD has never gotten a “b” in her entire academic career. And no, it isn’t b/c she attends a huge schooll, it’s rather tiny overall. ). When i asked if she talks to the teachers or the student before witing a rec., the GC’s response was that she would need a resume So ! I really appreciate your ideas to supplement the resume with anecdotes and guiding the writer to make key points! Great stuff! Please keep any more specific ideas coming…I’m taking notes!<br>
Btw…I agree with many of the posters that the value of the recommendation might be compromised by not waiving the right to view it and thank god that the first two she asked for we’re for the camp program and the third forwarded it to us instead of keeping it confidential.</p>