May is an appropriate time for current high school juniors who intend to apply to college to begin thinking about which teachers and other important adults in their lives they will want to ask to write a letter of recommendation on their behalf. As a general rule, a student does not want to have more than five adults writing recommendation letters that will be sent to every college to which they apply. The reason for this is that when their application file becomes overloaded with recommendation letters, the letters begin to do more harm than good. Namely, they raise the questions: “Why are so many people writing to tell us how wonderful this student is? What is wrong with this student that needs to be compensated for so desperately?” Targeted letters to a particular college or university, written by an alumna/us or person of influence, do not count toward the five letters.
When allocating who will write the letters of recommendation, a wheel can be a useful analogy. Most colleges and universities require recommendations from the student’s counselor and two academic teachers, allowing for two supplemental recommendations that can come from the student’s advisor, coach, arts or music teacher, community service, laboratory, internship, or job supervisor, etc. The counselor's letter is essentially a summative report of the student’s high school years. If the student is fortunate enough to attend a school where their counselor has a small caseload and knows them well, then their counselor’s letter will draw upon the student’s experiences in and out of the classroom and function as the wheel’s central hub. The additional letters, then, provide the spokes; whereby the farther apart they are from each other, the stronger and better the wheel becomes. The more similar the letters are to each other, regarding which of the students attributes they highlight and how they describe them, the closer together the spokes are and the less useful the wheel. Therefore, the question guiding who should write on the student’s behalf is, “What new information will this person’s letter add to the application?”
The teacher recommendation letter's purpose is to talk about a student’s strengths and gifts within a classroom setting. The thinking goes that if the teacher writing the letter enjoyed and appreciated having the student in their class, so too will the professors they will have in college. Thus, students want to be asking teachers that think positively about them in this regard; the grades the student has received in the teachers’ classes mean less by comparison. The relationships a student has developed with their teachers should guide their thinking so that they ask those teachers they believe know them best as a student.
The only hard and fast rule is that a student cannot ask two teachers who have taught them the same subject since they are likely to write about the student in similar ways. Conventional wisdom, much like the wheel analogy, suggests that one letter should come from a humanities teacher and the other from a STEM teacher. Following this advice increases the likelihood that they will write about the student differently, adding new and interesting facts about them to their application. But this is not a rule, just a guiding principle, so again, students should ask those teachers that they believe know them best as a student, so long as they haven’t taught them the same subject. A student should be in touch with their counselor; as they are there to help students think through which teachers they will want to ask.
In a typical school year, a student should ask their teachers in person, and in private so that their teachers are not put under undue pressure to say “yes.” All of a student’s teachers want to support them and their college application in the best way possible. If a given teacher feels they cannot respond with a resounding “YES!” they will often provide a soft “no,” along the lines of, “I can write for you, but it may be the case that another one of your teachers can write a better letter. Why don’t you think about asking them?” Should any of the teachers a student asks not agree to write for them, the student should reach out to another teacher.
Given the remote learning that is in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching out to teachers for letters of recommendation will instead be done via email. Now is an appropriate time for students to email their teachers using language similar to this:
Dear TEACHER,
I have begun to think about which teachers I want to ask to write my college recommendation letters. I am reaching out to you because...REASON 1...REASON 2...etc. Do you feel that you know me well enough as a student to write a letter that will serve me well?
Thank You,
STUDENT
Lastly, it is worth remembering that the letters written in support of a student’s application serve to corroborate and validate the impression of the student the admissions officers develop from reviewing the student’s transcript, testing (if applicable), extra-curricular activities, and personal essay(s). If the individuals writing on behalf of a student know them well, it will resonate through how and what they write about the student. It is the relationships with the significant adults in a student’s life that should guide who they ask to write on their behalf.
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