<p>I know that the most competitive schools require a guidance counselor rec and two teacher, preferably from junior or senior year.
I am an upcoming senior, and I completely screwed up my junior year, as in I know that if I even bother to ask any of my junior year teachers to recommend me, it would be an automatic reject.
So the point being, I know that most schools will accept recs from senior year teachers, but will it be OK if the teachers only know me for a few months?
I've read on past recommendation-based-threads that it'd be best if you tell the teacher that you want to recomend you like by the end of junior year..
..so yeah, am I screwed?</p>
<p>it depends on the specific schools you are applying to...for example, princeton will take recs from 10th grade teachers as well...if you have a 10th grade teacher that you think would write you a good rec, then go for it...however, for the schools that REQUIRE the teacher rec to come from 11th and 12th grade (i.e. stanford and duke), if you are 100% sure your junior teachers will write NEGATIVE things, then use your new senior teachers to write you recs...it's your only choice</p>
<p>Your not screwed but the teacher recommendations won't be an asset to your application. I would suggest not using any teachers from junior year if they don't like you. Because you won't know your senior teachers very well, their recommendations will be generic. Therefore, you'll be like tons of other kids with generic recommendations. I suggest trying to be very friendly to the 2 teachers that you intend to ask for recommendations. They still won't know much about you academically, but at least they will have a good impression of you.</p>
<p>I suppose it also depends how you messed up...if you were an awful student, then maybe you should reevaluate which schools you are applying to...if you were really irritating and rude, then maybe you can find a teacher who thinks you are an overall good kid who was just "acting out"...you might also consider one supplemental rec from an employer to make up for bad teacher recs...</p>
<p>Colleges like Stanford and Duke will reject you on the basis of not having teachers from the two last years of high school write your evaluations?</p>
<p>How about if those recommendations do not seem very broad (i.e. having come from, say, two science or social studies teachers)?</p>
<p>Or from courses that are not specifically mentioned as academic or related requirements (music performance, computer programming, art)?</p>
<p>Partly because I think there are enough recommendation threads floating around, partly because I have more comments that continue from my previous post, and partly because what I have to say may have some relevance to being "screwed," I'm going see if I can get some opinions off of here.</p>
<p>I am currently considering four teachers for a combination of doing my college recommendations, particularly for schools that use the Common App or simply state the need for two 'academic subjects.'</p>
<p>They are:
- my 11th grade AP Biology teacher (will definitely have her do an evaluation for all my colleges)
- my 11th grade AP Chemistry teacher (will probably not have anything new or special to say, but wouldn't ruin things for me either; problem: colleges think maybe I haven't been broad enough with the evaluations; top choice for colleges that do not care about this and would dislike my other choices)
- my 10-12th grade orchestra teacher (she obviously knows me very well and could speak of my musical ability, which I plan to continue to exercise in college; problem: some colleges don't consider it academic?; top choice for colleges that do)
- my 10th grade English teacher (he likes me, and maybe after a little reminder of my background with a resume, he would likely write a good evaluation for me that goes beyond what I can do in the sciences; problem: 10th grade is not recent enough for some colleges; top choice if colleges only do not care about year teacher taught the student but want to see academic breadth in choosing teachers)</p>
<p>One school I plan to apply to is Duke, which has specifically stated only 11th and 12th grade teachers. That leaves my chemistry and music teacher to choose between, depending on their definition of "academic."</p>
<p>So obviously I have a good deal of decisions to make, including what is to be done in the case of Common App schools, which does not touch on what each individual school might consider as non-academic.</p>
<p>Are there any suggestions? (I will certainly be contacting each school's admissions office, but the process has been seemingly slow.)</p>
<p>(There is also the question of what may be appropriate as a supplement. I will already have a recommendation from my research mentor (which will make my already-science-y application seem all the more science-oriented), and it would be disastrous to have them all write recommendations, since it is obvious that they will be in no way wonderfully unique from one another.)</p>
<p>"Bump" is an acronym?</p>
<p>Who needs it to stand for "bring up [this] post"?! Can't it just mean to literally "bump" it up?</p>
<p>I foresee this acronym dying a subtle death, much like SAT's did..</p>