<p>for those accepted to yale, did any of you receive one of your long recommendations from a teacher who taught you previous to 11th or 10th grade?</p>
<p>Before applying this year, I actually talked to my admissions officer about this same question because I was thinking about having a 9th grade teacher write one. She told me that she strongly, strongly recommended that my recommendations come from 11th or 12th grade teachers.</p>
<p><em>legendofmax here</em></p>
<p>I recommend using recs from 11th-12th grade only... usually a 10th-grade-teacher rec would be slightly "out of date" and the teacher may not have your strong points fresh-in-mind. My recs:</p>
<p>11th-12th grade Physics teacher, one page
12th grade English teacher, 0.75 page
Guidance counselor, one page
Extra 2.5-page rec from my old guidance counselor that was good</p>
<p>well, if i planned on applying early, wouldnt these 12th grade teachers not know me very well? especially since our school wants us to ask teachers NOW, at the end of summer for recommendations. Additionally, the tenth grade teacher i wanted to write my recommendation is someone i talk with regularly, who i also had in 9th grade.</p>
<p>blurblur, I wouldn't necessarily listen to the people above. It might be true in some situations, but not always. If your have kept in touch with your 9th and 10th grade teachers over all of your high school career, if you continue to show them papers you write, talk to them about which colleges you want to go to, then yeah, totally ask them to write your recs. For example, both of my teacher recs came from teachers I had had my freshman year (and one of them, my Latin teacher, throughout h.s.). My freshman English teacher wrote the other one, but I had kept in close contact with him--showing him my work, talking to him about my goals, my extracurriculars, etc. He knew who I was and was able to evaluate me. And I got into Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, Carleton...</p>
<p>thanks mutual, personally i feel the guideline of 11-12 grade teacher is more to help students than to restrict them--for a lot of people, im sure it isnt the best idea to ask old teachers, but in my case, i feel pretty strongly that it is.</p>
<p>If you feel that strongly, then go ahead. I just didn't feel comfortable asking a 9th grade teacher after the person who was reading my app strongly suggested not to. It might be a good idea to find out who your officer is and email them, (they're listed at this link <a href="http://www.yale.edu/admit/contact/staff.html">www.yale.edu/admit/contact/staff.html</a> ) since he or she might have their own individual opinion on recs.</p>