Hello!
I’m currently a junior at a big and rigorous city public school. I just had my first college guidance meeting and am thinking about recs.
The teachers I plan to ask are my AP Physics 1 teacher, a very popular teacher, and either my AP English Lang teacher (junior year) or my AP European history teacher (sophomore year). I have over a 100 in AP Lang (our school goes by the 100 points grading system) which is great, but I don’t feel like I really have a personal connection with the teacher. I speak a lot in class and always put forth my best effort, but I’m just not sure if he connects with me or not. On the other hand, I’ve had the best and closest relationship with my AP Euro teacher from sophomore year. I still keep up with her and I can say with confidence that my relationship with her is better than any other student in the grade(out of 600+) and she knows me on a level that any other teacher doesn’t. I also did very well in her class.
However, my guidance counselor is very against having a sophomore teacher write a rec (strictly junior year and one stem + one humanities). I’m also not that close to my counselor to begin with.
Should I still try to push for letting me get a sophomore teacher rec? Will it negatively affect my admissions chances? Or should I just ask my AP Lang teacher and keep things not on conflict?
2 of my kids used soph teachers for rec’s - for pretty much the same reasons you mentioned in your OP - and they were admitted to Northwestern. Obviously there is more to an admission than just teacher rec’s - but IMHO, there is nothing wrong with a rec from someone that knows you and can communicate that knowledge in a professional manner. Good Luck!
Given that you have a STEM teacher (physics) covered, as far as humanities, I’d pick a enthusiastic LOR from a sophomore teacher over a possibly lukewarm one from a junior teacher any day.
This seems to be a fairly controlling GC. Why should s/he be so concerned about which teachers give you recs? This sounds a little unusual, in a bad way. I agree with the others that you should go with your AP European history teacher.
My D used one sophomore year teacher and did very well in terms of college admissions so I’m guessing it was not an issue. However, this sophomore year teacher was also her advisor in a program she was in at the HS so they did have regular ongoing contact during junior and senior year.
ask the euro teacher
My S18 used 1 sophomore rec and 1 Junior rec. It worked just fine for him!