Getting Letters of Recommendation that Matter

The resume, once completed, can help you in several ways. As I mentioned before, it will make it easier to fill out your applications, you can include it with your application, but it can also help you in getting your letters of recommendation. Before we talk about that, let’s look at how the letter of recommendation is used by colleges.

Some colleges evaluate students not only for their academic potential, but also based on their personal characteristics. They learn about the personal side of the student through the essay, the recommendations, and the interview, if an interview is offered. Thus, it is important to choose someone to write you a letter of recommendation who really knows you well, and can give the admissions office valuable, useful information. The admissions office also uses the recommendation to discover things that they cannot learn from your transcript and grades, such as intellectual curiosity, how well you work with other students, if you actively participate in class discussions and add to the learning environment of the class. So, you can see it is important to choose a teacher who knows you well, and not just a popular teacher or a teacher who gave you a good grade. In fact, sometimes the best recommendation will come from a teacher in a class where you had a bad grade to start, but then through hard work were able to improve it. This teacher will be able to talk about your work ethic, and how you overcame obstacles.

Not all colleges require recommendations, and some schools require three recommendations. Usually the schools that require three, require one counselor recommendation and two teacher recommendations. Often parents will think it is a good idea to have the mayor, an alumnus from the school, or some famous and powerful person write a letter of recommendation. This usually does not help, because that person probably will not know you and thus will not be able to provide the admissions office with any personal insight. In fact, such a strategy can often back fire, because many schools resent a student or his parents trying to use their influence to buy their way into a school.

While we are on the topic of what you should not do, do not overload the colleges with letters of recommendation. A rule of thumb is never more than 2 over what they are asking for, or definitely no more than 5. College admissions officers have a saying: “The thicker the file, the thicker the kid.” That means, the more stuff you pile into your application, the more you might be trying to compensate for some other weakness in your application. Their feeling is that if you were a strong applicant you would let your application rest on its own merits, and not feel the need to submit every paper you got an “A” on in your life, letters of recommendation from your t-ball coach and your Sunday school teacher, and article clippings about you from the local paper.

You may also wonder, who should write your letters of recommendation. It is usually good to get an English teacher, or another teacher who can comment about your writing ability. The reason is, you will be writing a lot of papers in college and they want to be certain that you can write well. Another bonus is that English teachers usually write well themselves, so they can write you a nice letter of recommendation. Depending on your major, the particular school you are applying to may require recommendations from certain teachers. You will want to check this in your application. If you are applying for engineering, it may be good to have a science or a math teacher write you a letter of recommendation in addition to your English or history teacher.

As for extra recommendations, you should only include them if they add new information about you. That is, if someone knows you in a different way, such as a coach, an advisor for an activity that you are very involved in, or a boss or supervisor at your job. The information they provide may be useful to the admissions officers.

When choosing your teachers, keep in mind that the admissions officers want to know what you are like now. That is, they want current information. So it is generally advisable that you choose teachers that you have had in your junior and senior year. When you are considering which teachers to ask, you may want to check with your teachers before you officially ask them to write your letter of recommendation. That way you can try to gauge their interest in writing you a letter of recommendation. Ask the teacher, “I am starting to think about my college applications, and I was wondering if you would be willing to write me a strong letter of recommendation?”. If the teacher hesitates, or rolls her eyes around a few times in her head, before begrudgingly agreeing to write you a letter of recommendation, you may want to think of someone else. But, if the teacher says, “Sure, I would love to,” or, “It would be an honor,” or just generally seems happy to oblige you, that is a good sign.

When you are ready to officially ask the teacher for a letter of recommendation, you will want to provide her with preaddressed, stamped envelopes, a copy of your resume, any forms that may be required, and instructions. The instructions should let the teacher know what he or she should do with the letters, such as, “Please mail this directly to the school with the enclosed envelope, and sign across the seal,” or “Please return this to me in the enclosed envelope, so I can submit it along with my application.” Some colleges require that the recommendations be sent directly to them, and some colleges (usually the large state schools, like UConn or UMass) require that the letters be submitted along with the application, in one package. Some schools state that they will not accept or look at letters of recommendation (Rutgers). Further, some high schools have their own policies about handling letters of recommendation. Some require that everything be sent together in one package, and the teachers know to give their letters of recommendation directly to the guidance office. The guidance office then mails everything together as one package. Make certain that you know the policies of your school, and of the colleges that you are applying to, when you request your letters of recommendation.

Finally, you can use the resume to make filling out your application easier. Remember, as I said earlier, even though you have a resume you still need to fill in the application. Make sure that you carefully read the application, so you will know if they want you to rank your activities in order of importance to you, or if they ask you to write any short answers about which activity is most meaningful for you. There are a number of ways that you can apply to most colleges. Most have their own paper application, and their own online application. An increasing number of colleges accept the Common Application. Then there are other online sites that allow you to apply to colleges, such as embark.com. If a college is your top choice, I would recommend using their application. For all other colleges, it is OK to use the Common Application. Colleges that accept the Common Application agree not to treat it any differently than they would treat their own application. However, many schools have additional questions on their own application, and if you submit the Common Application you do not have the opportunity to answer these questions. I would recommend starting an account at the Common Application website. This will allow you to enter in all your basic information, and then generate applications and forms such as the teacher recommendation forms and secondary school evaluation forms. The forms can then be printed with all of your information filled in. You can use the same common application for a number of schools, and we will look at the common application to give you an idea of what college applications look like, and to acquaint you with the essay.