<p>I will be applying RD for University of Chicago but am having some trouble with their history or English/math or science recommendations. I asked a science and foreign language teacher to do my recs for the Common App, thinking they knew me better and that it made sense since I plan on possibly doing a Double Major in science and foreign language (since most of the schools I'm looking into offer double majoring). So basically, I'm wondering why Chicago doesn't accept foreign language recommendations, and would it be horrible to send it in anyway?</p>
<p>I do have an English or history teacher I could ask, but I feel like if I asked him/her now for a recommendation to only one school, he would think that I was only asking him out of desperation/need. Thoughts? I have a lot of respect for this teacher and don't want him to think any less of me, especially since I'm currently taking his class.</p>
<p>Ask him. It’s an honor.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure Chicago doesn’t allow Foreign Language recommendations. They don’t consider it “Academic” apparently. How do I know? I was in a similar situation (except I needed a Math/Sci recommendation) and emailed them. They didn’t want to see a recommendation from my Foreign Language teacher. They said I could use it as an Optional rec, but not as an “Academic Rec”.</p>
<p>I ended up asking a teacher I had for one semester for a rec. I apologize for about 10 minutes for asking for only one rec, but he was okay with it.</p>
<p>I was in the same situation and was worried about asking my history teacher to write a letter for only one school, but my counselor said to go ahead and ask. If you’re truly worried, you don’t need to tell them it’s for one school (get them to submit online) - honestly they shouldn’t care. I ended up not sending my foreign lang. teacher’s rec as supplementary because I felt that three letters was overkill.</p>
<p>I’ll ask him tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll understand. Thanks you guys, I’m feeling a lot better about it.</p>
<p>Ya I didn’t send the foreign language recommendation as Supplementary either because I don’t really think Optional recs help.</p>
<p>does latin count as a foreign language?</p>
<p>A Chicago representative explained that they discourage foreign language teacher recs because the depth of discussion and intellectual rigor that occurs in foreign language classes do not match to other “academic” classes.
She explained that in an English class, a student might be analyzing the effect of weather and symbolism in Shakespeare while in a Spanish class, a student might be learning how to say the word “symbol.”</p>
<p>@SouthKP: I read that too, but that’s not always true. In the IB program, by junior year, we are reading French literature and analyzing things quite akin to a history class - colonialism, immigration, publicity/marketing etc. We also are required to take a full year of Language Culture which is outside of our regular class - in junior year we did an entire impressionism unit where students had to analyze artists/musicians’ contributions to the movement in written papers and oral presentations. So while French 2 may be as such, I doubt all foreign language classes are. Doubt they’ll change the requirement though, because then people will try to submit their French 2 teacher’s rec.</p>