Recommendation Letters

How Many Letters of Recommendation Do You Need For College?

Normally, colleges require two recommendation letters: one from a STEM teacher and one from a humanities teacher. However, college admissions will ask your high school counselor to write a recommendation letter for you. In total, you will need at least three letters of recommendation, but you may submit more if you have additional recommendations from research with a professor or organization programs, internships, etc.

How To Secure A Good Recommendation Letter?

Remember, it is your teachers who will write the recommendations to colleges, so it is VERY IMPORTANT that you ask the teacher who knows you the best ahead of time. Typically, you should ask them around the end of your junior year because they will also be writing letters of recommendation for other students. In addition, try to make your teachers remember who you are; even saying hello to them on a daily basis will help them form a positive impression of you and write better recommendation letters.

Common Mistakes Before Sending Your Letters of Recommendation Request

Many students simply send their teachers their resume or the information contained in their college application. This, however, is not a good idea because when college admissions officers read your application, each section should say something new about you. If you simply give teachers the information that you have already stated in the activities section, when teachers write the recommendation letters, it will be repetitive and will not show a new side of you to admission officers.

Information To Include Before Sending Your Letters of Recommendation Request

You should send different information to different teachers. For example, ask one teacher to discuss your academic strengths in the classroom and another to discuss your social life (things that would not be shown in the application such as personalities). Make sure to specify in the letter exactly what you want them to include! This is critical because they do not have time to guess what you require; instead, they will simply write the information and the request that you made for them in the letter.

How To Secure A Good Counselor Letter of Recommendation?

Counselor letters of recommendation are equally important as teacher letters of recommendation. However, because counselors are typically much busier than teachers because they must organize all four grades, it is critical to visit their office once a month or so to inquire about opportunities at the school so that they will remember you. In high school, I would always go to my counselor's office and ask about possible tournaments and community college classes that I could do. The more times I visited the office, the better the counselor remembered me. And it's come to the point where while she was writing the letters of recommendation to me that I don’t even need to provide any information to her since she already knew me well enough to write a good letters of recommendation.

If you need help getting a good letters of recommendation from your teachers, you can schedule with me here