Recommendation Letters

<p>I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, but I haven't been able to find and answer to this particular question.</p>

<p>My daughter's strongest component will be teacher recs. She's got three teachers who taught her as a freshman and now as a junior and have marveled at her growth. Her GPA is excellent - close to 4.0.uw, all honors, 5 APs. SATs will be above average but not great. </p>

<p>Any problem with submitting three teacher recs? They will be in English, Social Studies and Spanish. (Ironically, her strongest subject is math.) How important are these rec letters to admissions officers? (She's not looking at Ivies.) </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>a lot of schools require one humanities and one math/science rec.
your daughter only have humanities. If she is good at math, then she should definitely get one from her math teacher!</p>

<p>Some schools don't require this but most recommend to have one from both science and the humanities. If she's good at math, and as you say, it's her strongest subject, no doubt she'll have a solid rec from her teacher. The colleges will see from her transcripts her improvements in English, SS and Spanish over the years, but a rec from a science teacher might be crucial in providing new information about her analytic/problem-solving side. If a third rec is allowed, then she could send in another on from the humanities</p>

<p>Most schools require one from math or science and only take 2 recs, but I would have at least three in her file. It is useful if she is deferred from early or waitlisted later, she could use the third one as an additional rec.</p>

<p>or science and only take 2 recs,"... Most schools!! What sort of "most schools" do you have in mind? Most schools that I am familiar with outside the Top 50 require only one teacher recommendation and a guidance counselor rec. </p>

<p>Since the OP indicated that the student in question is not shooting for the Ivies three teacher recommendations may in fact be overkill. It doesn't hurt in all cases to send supplemental recs, but I think it is simply not true that most colleges require one math and one science, or one math and one humanities. The best thing to do is to check the web-sites of prospective colleges and if things aren't clear put in a call to the admissions office.</p>

<p>You are not going to go wrong with one from math/science and one from the humanities. What are you going to do if 1 out of 10 schools she is applying to requires that, and you have 2 from humantiites? Are you going to try to get a rec written over the xmas vacation or not apply to that school? </p>

<p>The OP said "not ivies", but not necessary outside of top 50s.</p>

<p>I guess I should have been clearer. A couple of top 50s are included in our tentative list.</p>

<p>So for top 50's are we talking one science/math and one humanities plus gc? I hear you guys saying it may be overkill, but can we add an extra one because we know the recs will be stellar?</p>

<p>The GC's is not necessarily a Recommendation letter, and is in fact very often a form to be filled out, so don't count it. I would get 1 Math/Science and one Humanities.</p>

<p>My S had that sent out to every school, even though some (State schools) did not ask for any. Many of his schools asked for 1 Rec. letter, but did not say that you could not send 2. The only school he sent 1 letter to was a school that specifically said "Please send only Rec. Letter". You are not likely to encounter that. Send what you want, they will read and consider what they want.</p>

<p>My S was accepted practically everywhere he applied.</p>

<p>For top 50 schools, having one math/science and one humanity plus the gc one is best because no school would question that combination. You can then add supplementary recs if the school accepts them. You can usually ask for as many recs as you like to be kept on file and send any or all of them to certain schools or use them if you are waitlisted.</p>

<p>You can send three. As long as they're relevent. Don't send 14, including one from her dentist.</p>

<p>I sent 3, not including my counselor rec, because my advisor/acting teacher wouldn't have counted as a 'real' recommendation. But I felt that his would be the strongest. And I know he wrote me a great letter.</p>

<p>The way it works at my D's school is you ask for 2 recs to be included in your file. You then give your college counselor a list of schools you are applying to. College couselor office is reponsible for sending the packet to those schools on time. The packet would have the transcript, teacher's rec, college counselor's rec. They send out 2 recs to every school because you cn't go wrong with that. They also insist on 1 from math/science and 1 from humanities. If a kid is deferred or waitlisted, then additional recs are sent out (one from the 3rd teacher, and update rec from the college counselor).</p>

<p>If you are applying to top 50, then some schools will also allow one extra supplement from outside of school - friend, boss, coach, and even parents.</p>

<p>What I have found is that people are very busy. It is better to ask for those recommendations early. Keep them in your school file and send them out as needed. Last thing you need is to scramble for a recommendation letter last minute.</p>

<p>It is actually often a plus to have a recommendation from a class a student struggles in. These teachers know the struggles and hard work of the student. Definitely take a look at each school she is considering applying to at all and personally investiage whether the school requires a science/ math and a humanity. As another poster mentioned, there may well be one that does and then you will have a problem. Of my two teacher recs, I have my lowest grade for the year in one class and over a one hundred percent in the other (chemistry and Latin).</p>

<p>Also, I understand this is off the topic of your question, so please disreagrd it if you already know. Be careful that the teachers don't write an all-positive letter. From the wording of your posts, I got the impression- perhaps incorrectly- that these letters may be written full of praise. Letters should recommend a student to the college and focus on the student's strong points, but a letter that fails to mention a student's weaknesses will raise a red flag because, as my college counselor tells me, everyone has stuff she needs to work on and colleges know that. Including the student's struggles during some point in the recommendations indicates that the teacher is giving an honest view of the student.</p>

<p>My top schools, Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and North Carolina, do not require recommendations from specific subjects. They just ask for two recs. Only for Duke, you need one from a math or science teacher IF YOU ARE APPLYING TO THE ENGINEERING SCHOOL.</p>

<p>Your daughter needs to check the application requirements of each of the schools to which she plans to apply to see how many recommendations they want and whether they specify that they want recommendations from teachers who have taught the applicant specific subjects. She may also be able to figure out from the Web site whether additional recommendations, besides those specifically required, would be welcome. (In general, one or two additional recommendations would be OK. Lots of additional recommendations would not be.)</p>

<p>Even if one of the colleges on your daughter's list wants a recommendation from a humanities teacher and one from a math or science teacher, that doesn't mean that your daughter has a problem. She simply needs to solicit a math or science teacher's recommendation for that college only. If she feels that the recommendation she will receive from that teacher will not be of the same high caliber as the ones she will get from the humanities teachers, she need not submit that recommendation to any of the other colleges to which she is applying. Instead, she can use her preferred teachers for all of the others.</p>

<p>My daughter applied to six schools in the USNWR top 50. None specifically required a humanities/social studies teacher recommendation and a math/science teacher recommendation. But she wasn't applying for science or engineering.</p>

<p>My thinking is go with the ones that give you the best recommendation, I think you have to use your intuition. Don't be shy about class that your D did not get good grades, I know my daughter will ask from one teacher that she did not have great grade in her first semester but she is improving in her second semester. Another point is that unless your D is going to major in math or math related fields, why do you need a letter of recommendation from a Math teacher?</p>

<p>Great question! But even then, I got my two, and best, recs from my chemistry and English teachers, and I haven't and don't think I will ever take a class in either of those subjects while in college!</p>

<p>Who cares? They want how good a student you were in various classes...</p>