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College admissions
Course: College admissions > Unit 4
Lesson 4: Letters of recommendationRequesting letters of recommendation
Getting a recommendation letter for college? Pick a teacher who knows you well, not just one who gave you good grades. Ask recent teachers, and try to get a mix: maybe one from Humanities and one from Math or Science. Give them plenty of time, and chat about what you'd like them to highlight.
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- I'm homeschooled and i have been told that it would not be best to have a parent write recommendation letter. Who should i ask? I don't do co-op.(18 votes)
- An old family friend that has seen your academic progress grow would be a good choice.(5 votes)
- What would you suggest for home-schooled students who have no one to provide letters of recommendation for them? I've done a good deal of research on the subject, but am having some trouble figuring out what my next step should be.(7 votes)
- You can have your parents, any teachers at co-ops, any piano teachers, really anyone who knows how you do your homework and whether you're a reliable student recommend you. But especially your parents.(5 votes)
- Can you ask letters of recommendation from employers?
For example, I work in a laboratory at my local university. Can I ask him for a letter of recommendation?(3 votes)- Absolutely! If your employer is a professor with an advanced degree (PhD, MD, etc), his opinion may be regarded even more highly than a high school teacher!
You can request letters from teachers, employers, coaches, advisors, or even family friends, anyone who knows you well! However, it is usually better to ask for letters from writers that have completed more schooling (both for the sake of letter quality and the influence that the reviewers will perceive).(11 votes)
- Can I get a recommendation letter from a teacher from outside my school, but who has taught me a core subject for quite some time and who knows me well enough?(3 votes)
- Definitely! Just ask any teacher who's taught you for a recommendation.(6 votes)
- the teacher i had most interaction with and i think would know me the best who i've had for every year of high school through 6 different classes was an agricultural education teacher but the major i will be applying for is in computer science . Would he be a good person to write a recommendation letter?(4 votes)
- Even if the teacher isn't in the same field as your intended major, that teacher can still talk about things like your diligence, attentiveness, punctuality, hard work ethic, etc.(3 votes)
- All the colleges I plan on applying to are on common app.Will my teachers have to write recommendations each time for every college?(3 votes)
- Personally, I can't even get the common app's letter of recommendations feature to work, but, to my knowledge, they submit a single recommendation which gets distributed amongst all the schools you apply to.(1 vote)
- At, is having a club advisor write your letter of recommendation a good idea if you've never been in that teacher's class? Not to mention, if the club is more creative-based like say writing or poetry, while that's not your intended major? **The advisor is an English teacher 0:13(2 votes)
- The club advisor is a responsible person whose role as advisor is much like a teacher who has had you in a class. If she (he) has met you and seen your work, and then writes truthfully about it, that should satisfy any college's requirement for a recommendation letter.
Do remember, if the letter is to go by post, to give your teacher a stamp. That's just basic courtesy.(2 votes)
- Can i ask my math tuition teacher to write my letter of recommendation ?(1 vote)
- The simple answer is yes, you can. The longer answer is yes, but only if he/she knows you well. You want people who really know you to write your recommendation letters.
Hope this helps!(3 votes)
- Do college admissions officers actually accept recommendation letters from family members or extracurricular teachers(in the context of being a homeschooled student who learns exclusively from textbooks and has never taken an academic class in school, and so therefore does not have any normal teachers to ask for recommendation?(2 votes)
- During which period of time in the high school should I ask my teachers? I've been hearing from others that late semester of Junior year may be the best time period but now I feel like I can ask during my Senior year....(2 votes)
- Hi Yaebin! I know, it's kind of confusing! I have heard all different things, as well. Most people do say that in your second semester of Junior year, you should start asking for recommendation letters. But, I have also heard that you should ask teachers from 10th (and even 9th!) grade to do one for you, especially if they know you really well. I would guess that a good time to start asking would be Junior year, but if you have a teacher in 9th or 10th grade who knows you really well, then don't be afraid to ask them to do one, even if you aren't going to college yet.
Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesn't!(1 vote)
Video transcript
- So when you're getting
a recommendation letter, it needs to be from an academic teacher. So those are core
subjects: History, Science, Math, Social Studies, Languages. When you have a recommendation
from a theater teacher, director, or band leader,
those are helpful, but they're not what we're looking for in an academic-required
teacher recommendation. - I always encourage students to reach out to the teachers that know them best. Not the teachers that gave
them the highest grade, although those might be the same people. But a teacher that knows you well is a great place to start. - Often times for teachers,
it's going to be teachers in their most recent years. Their junior and/or senior year. These teachers can usually
include specific examples or anecdotes about their
intellectual curiosity or their participation in the classroom. - And it's always wonderful
if it's at all possible to get that full range. So possibly one letter
from a Humanities teacher. Meaning English, History,
Language and so forth. Another from Math, Science, if possible. That doesn't always
work, but it doesn't help to have two English
teacher recommendations. They tend to say the same type of thing regarding your writing and
your involvement in class. - The week before school,
plan out on a calendar when you'll be asking your teachers, and when you'll ask them
to send their letter. Give them ample time. I say almost a month. - Talking to teachers about the things that you would like for them to highlight is definitely a key component
because as much as teachers are working as hard as they
can, they're often writing multiple recommendations and
so it's easy either to forget or even to not highlight
those things that, or overlook those things that might make a very big difference in
understanding the applicant. - What I recommend for students is when they go up to that teacher, instead of handing them a resume which sort of lets them
know here's my grades, here's maybe my GPA, my SAT scores, and all my activities at the school, that's going to be in other
parts of the application. Teachers don't need to talk about that. What admissions people
really want from teachers is how is that student in that class? So what I recommend for students to do is sit down with that teacher. Maybe give them four or five bullet points of here's why I asked you. Here's why I really wanted you to write my letter or recommendation. - What are things that you
want to make sure comes across that maybe you can't say,
or feel shy expressing in the personal statement or maybe in the additional
information section? - We are going to be looking
at these recommendations to again see how they're going
to contribute to our campus and how they're going to contribute to the classroom specifically. How they're going to get involved. And then sometimes we
can also pull on things like their resilience and their excitement and love of learning. So those are all different things that we can gather from recommendations.