<p>How have you all handled the recommendations? Some schools are very clear about what they want but most are not. D has two from academic teachers, (AP English and Chem) one from her Drama teacher at school, and one from a director who has worked with her outside of school. We don't want to send too many....but it's hard to figure out how Admissions depts interface with the Theatre depts, and which ones to send to which schools.</p>
<p>We had similar questions. We noticed with the common ap, that they tell you the limit of how many recommenders you can have for each school. We were also at a loss because we have recommenders who are private drama coaches, an English teacher from her high school, and the teacher of a college course she is taking through the Young Scholars program. We decided to assign the academic teachers to the LAC BA programs (if they only take one or two recommendations) and one drama teacher or two, depending on how many the conservatories accept. It’s hard to tell how much these recommendations will matter at all. Some colleges don’t want any recommendation letters; some seem to accept up to four. One of the coaches told us that she send letters for her students outside of the required recommendations.</p>
<p>That was our experience, too. D had a math and English teacher for her “official” recs, had one in line from her Choir teacher and also 2 theatre recs ready - but hardly any of those ended up going in. We did keep copies of the theatre recs with us at auditions; I had a whole packet of extra photocopies of everything (essays, resume, recs) whether they were required or not, just in case someone made an off-hand request - but throughout 7 auditions, no one did. </p>
<p>Somehow the recommendation letter has gone the way of the interview in the college admissions process - sadly obsolete, for some reason. Probably it was overuse of hyperbole and lack of meaning, but you’d think they’d ideally be very helpful. Personally I think a recommendation from a director who knows the kid would be much more helpful than a resume (since so many of these kids barely have resumes, and there are no explanations of the breadth or quality of the productions on it).</p>
<p>But - that’s how it is right now. Good luck!</p>
<p>My daughter goes to a Cyber Charter school, so we were concerned that her school recommendations would not be able to speak to her ability to work in a group; hence, she asked her teacher at the face-to-face class she is taking at a local university. But we’re probably over-thinking the recommendations.</p>
<p>Hard to keep from overthinking everything down to the shoelaces! I realize that our school handles recs through Naviance, so I can’t see on the common app how many are allowed-- I guess D will have to go through those with GC. Thank you!</p>
<p>Oh my gosh, we need to buy new shoelaces!</p>
<p>The meeting of the College-Induced OCD Society is hereby called to order. Everyone will now reveal his or her most essential strengths in a 499 word essay followed by a 2 minute 59 second monologue. You may begin.</p>
<p>On our transcript requests, we are supposed to write down which recommendations we want to go to each school. So by checking/digging on the website of each college, we knew whether the college wanted one or two academic recs and/or one or two artistic recs and assigned our recomenders accordingly. As a last resort, our GC sends all recs. And everything comes from the school, so they can’t blame the student if they get too many! Isn’t this fun??</p>
<p>At our school, the college counselors will use “extra” recommendations as source material for their letters. Helps a lot when you have recommendations from summer-program teachers, etc., and it gives the counselors a lot more raw material to work with. I’m an arts teacher, and my third child is a junior who plans to audition for acting programs, so I’ve seen the process from both sides. Definitely worthwhile to ask your counselors if they would incorporate those extras into the official school letter, and probably also better than exceeding the colleges’ specifications. Hope that’s of some help!</p>
<p>For S1, he tried to make sure he wasn’t sending the wrong # of LORs, etc. Lots of bother. For S2, he just sent all LORs (5!–required by one program, actually: 2 academic, 1 from GC, 1 theatre teacher and 1 art teacher) to everyone. He applied to a variety of majors-- theatre design BFAs, studio art, theatre BAs, and even 1 arch! He did really well w/acceptances (got in 11/12) and I don’t think his many LORs really hurt anything. So my advice is not to worry TOO much on this one.</p>
<p>Wow, this is great info! Thank you, Times3 and madbean. I’ll have to think of an appropriate way to bring that up with her GC, Times3…and meanwhile I’ll just take madbean’s suggestion (except for NYU which is stridently against having more than 2).</p>
<p>Here’s an idea: on the Common App, in the “writing” section, there is a button to upload “additional information.” It stipulates: “Please upload a document here if you wish to provide details of circumstances or qualifications not reflected in the application.” Why not use this for an additional theatrical recommendation, instead of a longer list of extracurriculars? Indeed, since my kids extracurriculars run heavily toward theater, wouldn’t be good to have a letter that provides some context of “circumstances or qualifications not reflected in the application”? As far as I can tell, the only limits on any uploaded document are: “The file cannot exceed 500 KB in size and should be in .doc, .docx, .wpd, .rtf, .xls, .xlsx, .pdf, or .txt format.”</p>