<p>I have a small crisis in my rec situation for early applications.</p>
<p>I'm applying EA to the University of Chicago. UChicago requires two recommendations: one from an English or social studies teacher, and one from a science or math teacher. Foreign language teachers are not permitted to write either of these recommendations. That's a sad piece of news for me because my Spanish teacher is universally known for writing the best recommendations. But there's nothing I can do about that, so that's not the issue.</p>
<p>I have a few not-so-great options for my recs. For my first recommendation, I chose my junior English teacher. She's young (24) and graduated from my high school in 2002. While she doesn't have much experience writing recommendations, she has just gone through the college process and came out with a 4.0 GPA. Further, she's an English teacher, so she can write well.</p>
<p>My science or math rec is a little trickier. Since my school is very small, I've only had two science teachers and one math teacher in my whole high school career. During my freshman and sophomore years, I had a science teacher with whom I don't get along well. He also does not have any experience writing recommendations, and he is not the senior member of the science department. My junior year, I had a different teacher, the senior member of the science department. She can't string together a sentence in everyday speech, and her writing is horrendous. She does not excel in her field, and I didn't like her as a teacher at all. However, she is a nice person, and we got along fairly well.</p>
<p>My choice for this rec is my math teacher. I've had him since Algebra 1 in 8th grade, all the way up through Calculus my senior year. I've also competed (and won first place) at math contests under his instruction. He's been teaching at my school for over thirty years, and he's a very good teacher.</p>
<p>Now for my problem. I asked my math teacher to write my recommendation, and he asked me what it should entail. I basically told him that it's supposed to be a general synopsis of my success, with special emphasis on math. I also told him that the University of Chicago calls it a "teacher evaluation." Now I'm a bit worried that he may not know enough to write my recommendation. Is there anything I can tell him that will ultimately produce a better recommendation and a better chance of my being admitted?</p>
<p>Thanks for your help.</p>