Wasting a good recommendation?

There was another recent thread about recommendations, but I didn’t want to hijack it. I am wondering if people tend to send more recommendations than colleges specifically ask for. Of course each college has different guidance and we will read that carefully, but generally it seems they all ask for recommendations from specific teachers through the common app and sometimes allow for, but don’t necessarily encourage, submission of additional recommendations through SlideRooom, their own portal or by US Mail.

Because the schools have different requirements, my daughter has had to ask five different people to write a recommendation for her. From her high school, she has two academic recommendations (English and Calc), plus a rec from her chorus teacher. Then, for some schools, she needed two additional music recs, so she has one from her primary voice teacher and also one from a voice teacher from summer camp with whom she really clicked. So, she has five recommendations. We won’t get to see any of them, but I suspect each teacher took time to write a thoughtful and supportive recommendation. It seems almost disrespectful not to use these recommendations at as many schools as possible.

Sometimes there is no grey area. The school wants exactly two recommendations, so they will receive just two from my daughter. But, if they leave the door open for more recs, should we try to send them more? For instance, my daughter’s voice teacher has known her for years and they have a great relationship. Since voice is a big part of even her LAC applications, it would seem that all the schools should get this rec, if at all possible.

How are others dealing with this? I certainly don’t want my daughter to go overboard and send schools information that they don’t want, but I also don’t want to waste letters that have been written with care and may help colleges learn more about my daughter.

Don’t send more recommendations than the school asks for. It is fine to not send every LOR to every college.

It seems you collected wisely. I assume there’s a music supp involved. In that case, even if a college only asks for two academic LoRs, she could submit one extra, most related to her specialty.

Thank you both for your responses. She certainly won’t send recommendations that the schools clearly don’t want. Sometimes it is just not so clear.

We have four recommendations. The one from her main specialty goes to all schools. The others I just assign, somewhat randomly unless a teacher has an association with a school. If possible, I look at the music supplement before we file the main application to see if I need to reserve certain ones for the music school.

If it is not clear then I would not send more than one supplemental recommendation.

I was just at a smallish LAC that said they’d welcome up to 3 additional recommendations even though they only require one. The big flagships my kid applied to only allowed one or two total.

Absolutely send those two music recommendations but do so in a music supplement to the common application, along with a recording, and a music resume. For some, the music supplement is very important for admission, depending on the talent and experiences so far. Two LOR’s are fine for a supplement.

The only “extra” here is the choral teacher. Is the choral teacher more important than the two voice recommendations?

Generally the main part of the common app asks for two academic teachers. So two academic and two in the music supplement is fine.

For the third school recommendation I would call the schools. They might want that in the music supplement so that all music LOR’s are in one place. I have no idea.

But keep the LOR’s for the supplement !