<p>My son wants more than the two teachers required to write evaluations for him. </p>
<p>Kosher, or bad form?</p>
<p>Extra evaluations are totally fine.</p>
<p>Matt says
[quote]
Extra recommendations. If you feel an extra recommendation would show an important additional side of you not already covered, you may send in an additional letter of recommendation. This in general would not need to be on an MIT recommendation form from the application; a separate sheet of paper is most common. In general, third recommendations from a teachers do not provide much additional insight; the most helpful supplemental recommendations come from people who know you well outside the classroom. Some helpful extra recommendations I've seen have come from research mentors, youth group leaders, coaches, and bosses. If you decide a third recommendation is necessary, have your recommender send this via US Mail to MIT Admissions, and be sure your full name and date of birth are included.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>thanks again Mollie
He wants to send in an extra rec from his music teacher/choral director (kind of like a coach I guess). He feels he needs to send the one from his English teacher because she can speak to his struggle with writing since she has taught him for 2 years (small school/few teachers) and has seen his hard work and improvement despite his poor grades in English. I agree with him that this may help explain his rather lopsided transcripts. But he feels the positive music rec will round him out a bit in the humanities, to show he is not just a math geek who can't write too well under pressure.
:-)</p>
<p>I agree with Mollie, as usual. I personally asked my research mentor to send in an extra recommendation - but of course there are also plenty of people who don't send in any additional recs.</p>
<p>And theorymom, I definitely understand what you mean about the "not just a geek who can't write too well" thing - creative writing was one of the things I enjoyed most in high school, but I didn't have enough space to talk about it at length on my college apps...so I asked my 11th grade English teacher (who had the biggest impact on my writing of any of my high-school teachers) if she could mention it in my recommendation. Seems like it worked. :)</p>