Too many recommendations?

[tmanneopen]

<p>Hello there! Well, I was deferred EA. Now I want to submit another recommendation, although I already technically sent in 4. However I feel they all say different things.</p>

<p>Chem teacher - Great at science, always helping others in it, good leader
Latin teacher - Great in class, very nice person, always helping out
Guidance rec - General talking up the student
Programming mentor rec - Describes how I work well in an engineering environment and part of a team</p>

<p>The one I was going to send in was from my swim coach. The reason why is because he has been begging me to let him write one for me. He always says I'm one of the most important members and he said I have one of the greatest hearts out of anyone he's met. His dad is also an MIT alumni, although I don't know how far that will go.</p>

<p>My question is, is it bad to have too many recommendations? Will that hurt me? I feel as though he would write about something different than the others, but on the chance he doesn't, would it hurt me?</p>

[PiperXP]

<p>I feel like this case is sort of borderline, but I can’t help but think that if you have someone begging you to let them write you a req, you should let them :P</p>

[kldaace]

<p>The thing with supplementary recommendations is that it has to show a different facet of you that would not be captured by your normal recommendations. For instance, your teachers may know about your involvement in swim, but your swim coach might provide insight into how you work, how you overcome adversity, how you adapt to new challenges, etc. that might help your application.</p>

<p>Nothing will hurt you unless it’s irrelevant or repeats what is said in other letters. You can avoid that pretty easily by telling him to write about swim specific things or the "how"s I listed above.</p>