I already have two junior year teachers I’m getting LORs from –– one is my teacher advisor, history teacher from sophomore year to senior year(I’m a junior, but I will have him again next year), and I’m a teacher’s assistant for him. The other is from my sophomore through senior year english teacher. They are the teachers for a social justice education based school-within-a-school program that carries a group of 30 students for these three years. It is very intimate, requires a lot of collaboration, and is hugely student run, so these LORs from these teachers will look pretty good. I have a math teacher from sophomore year that I’m really close with and we both have a lot of respect for each other. She has talked well about me to other teachers on campus and has said unbelievably amazing things about me to both my peers and myself. Thus, I’m sure she would be able right a very strong LOR. I’m concerned that because she is my sophomore teacher it may not be worth it. However, I don’t have any junior teachers that I feel would be able to write an effective LOR.
I have 2 kids admitted to Highly Selective school - one was ED, one was RD - and they both had sophomore teachers write LORs.
It is fine to get one from a sophomore year teacher. But in general I’d only send 2 teacher/academic LORs. If you send a third letter it should be able to say something about your from a different perspective (ex. a supervisor at a job, etc.).
I only had one LOR and it was from a sophomore teacher. It was good enough to get me into UMich.