<p>I applied Early Action to Yale, as well as Harvard, Princeton, and Upenn. One of my recommendations was from my AP French teacher and the other was from the facilitator of the Toronto Student Environment Council. Both were really good recommendations. The problem is the latter recommendation. The facilitator was never my academic teacher. She is a certified teacher, and she indicated this on the common app, but there's no course on my transcript that she taught. Her recommendation was entirely about my community leadership and nothing about me in the classroom.
I realized my mistake and sent a supplementary recommendation from my AP chemistry teacher to all those schools.
What are my chances now at the schools I'm applying to? Don't sugar-coat; if my chances are zero, then say so. This thread is more of a warning for other students to not make the same mistake.</p>
<p>Why do you call it a mistake? Even if it was, you corrected it by submitting another teacher’s rec. I do not think your chances have decreased simply because of this ‘incident’, otherwise one should really start to worry about the whole admission process.</p>
<p>Actually, Yale’s website answers my question.
“Your recommenders must be able to write about your recent work in rigorous academic subjects. We strongly encourage you to submit recommendations from 11th and 12th grade teachers. Yale has an extremely competitive applicant pool, so it’s probably unwise to submit a recommendation from a favorite 9th grade teacher or from a coach or chorus director unless he or she has also taught you recently in an academic course.”
So I’ve just been disadvantaged. I gracefully accept this fact, and I’m posting this as a lesson to other applicants. ONLY USE RECS FROM ACADEMIC TEACHERS. Not gym teachers, coaches, mentors etc.</p>
<p>^You would have been in big trouble if you only submitted the recs from your French teacher and this facilitator from Toronto. But you did submit a chemistry rec, so I’m really not seeing the problem. For the other three schools, their deadline isn’t even until January, so why would it matter that you sent in your third rec in November? And for Yale, as long as they received all of them, you’re fine.</p>
<p>When you send in supp recs, do you have to use the common app teacher evaluation form?</p>
<p>you applied early to both Yale and Upenn?</p>
<p>Relax, relax. All this anxiety will be over soon enough and by next year, it’ll be a distant memory.</p>
<p>no, you can’t apply early to both Yale and Upenn.</p>
<p>I used my 10th grade algebra II teacher who was also my ninth grade volleyball coach, and I still got in. Teacher recs play a larger role for athletes than they do non-athlete applicants.</p>
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<p>I’ve never heard that. Why do you say that?</p>
<p>OP said he applied EA to Yale and to the other schools – didn’t indicate that he applied in any other EA/ED roles.</p>
<p>"Teacher recs play a larger role for athletes than they do non-athlete applicants. " Ehhh… how’s that? If anything, it’s the opposite as the pool of recruitable athletes is smaller, thus you must be less choosy.</p>
<p>[8</a> Big Changes to College Admissions in 2010 and 2011 - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/11/15/8-big-changes-to-college-admissions-in-2010-and-2011.html]8”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/11/15/8-big-changes-to-college-admissions-in-2010-and-2011.html)</p>
<p>“As high school teachers and counselors get overwhelmed with recommendation requests, they often provide less specific or thoughtful comments, admissions officers say. NACAC found that the percentage of colleges giving “considerable importance” to teacher or counselor recommendations fell from 21 percent to 17 percent from 2007 to 2009. “Ninety-eight percent of recommendations tell us what students already told us,” says Philip Ballinger, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Washington. UW this year stopped asking for or even reading teacher recommendations from applicants. The trend towards bland or generic recommendations causes headaches for schools that still rely heavily on them. About half of the applicants to Pitzer have perfect or near-perfect grades and test scores, says Angel Perez, director of admissions. “How do you differentiate among perfect GPA and SAT scores? I lean on those letters,” he says. But, he complains, a growing number of the recommendations ‘are not that useful…. It is making our job a lot more difficult.’”</p>
<p>So you’re saying…I might have an advantage by disobeying the instructions and sending in a “unique” letter? Because the mentor told me she wrote about environmental leadership and activism, although nothing about me in the classroom.</p>
<p>Assuming they received the last rec, you now have two academic recs and a supplemental rec. There’s no problem.</p>
<p>Teacher recs and essays play larger roles for athletes because Admissions realizes that the grades for recruits are on average lower than the rest of the admitted class, therefore they look elsewhere on the application for reasons to admit the student to their school. As much as the Ivies deny it, their standards are lowered for athletes. I would know. There is no way I would ever have gotten into Yale if it were not for Track, my kick-ass essays, and my amazing teacher recommendations.</p>