<p>Hello fellow CCers,</p>
<p>I'm currently a junior and was wondering about the teacher rec portion of the college application. For those of you who are seniors and older, how did you approach this? Did you start sucking up to teachers? Did you participate more than you previously had in high school?</p>
<p>Post the changes you went through in order to win strong teacher recs.</p>
<p>sucking up to teachers? you bet
;)</p>
<p>Did you start sucking up to teachers? heck yes! In all seriousness, though, do subtle suckups. Go in to chat, break the ice the first few times by talking about school. I didn’t really force any relationship creation, so I didn’t try to suckup, but it kinda just happened. </p>
<p>Did you participate more than you previously had in high school? heck yes! This is probably more important than the first imo. You want to demonstrate that you bring something to the class. You don’t want to be a parasite (aka just absorbing information, never sharing any opinions- if you have them, that is), because colleges are looking for people that give back.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t think I did. I started thinking about from whom I would get my recs about halfway through senior year, and I had already done recs for summer programs, starting in sophomore year, without sucking up or changing my behavior, so I never thought to do that. In classes I like, I’ve always participated a lot. In 9th grade Latin the teacher used to stop calling on me and my friends because we were all “Yay, participation!” And if I like a teacher, I always talk to him/her.
Mostly, it was for the summer recs, and will be, for the college recs, just a process of thinking about who knows me the best. My Art History teacher basically wrote mini-recs home to my parents every month, asked about my summer plans in class, is eloquent, knows me well, and I was a really stand out teacher in her class, so she’s a no-brainer. Then I sort of wanted one for science/math, and I haven’t had that many teachers. My 9th grade math teacher retired, and that was so long ago, my 10th and 11th grade teachers are the same, I’m done with math so I have no 12th grade teacher. My 9th grade science teacher retired and I was not very into her class anyway, I didn’t take math in 11th grade, and my 10th and 12th grade Chem teachers are the same, my 12th grade Physics teacher still won’t really know me at rec time. I’m leaning toward my Chem teacher because I’m better in that class and have a regional award.
If it’s a class in which I don’t love to participate, then I don’t think that teacher will really write me the truest rec. Like, I considered a rec from my French teacher, and she had written me one before for a summer thing, and my interviewer commented that it was really, really positive. I’m sure she would write me a great rec, but I don’t like her class, and even though I participate a lot, it’s because the other kids won’t and I feel sorry about it. I considered my Human Geography teacher, but I don’t really know him all that well, though he would doubtlessly write me a positive rec. I just think it’s better to work off of preexisting relationships than to try to create one for a rec.</p>