Teacher Recommendations

TLDR

Plan to get a letters of recommendation from your counselor and two teachers attached to your college application.
Exact timing for requesting letters varies: follow your local custom and process to avoid being late, but request at least a month before your deadline.
Work to manage your relationship with the people you want recommendations from long before you ask for the recommendation.

The Goal

Your college application will likely need letters of recommendation or endorsement. These are commonly comprised of a letter from your counselor (who should also provide your school’s profile), plus two more from teachers to confirm that you are a student whose presence is desirable in a classroom.

Some colleges want more than two recommendations from teachers, many want less than two, a few want other recommendations, but “two recommendations from teachers” is common enough that it is what we recommend preparing for.

You may be able to skip this if you choose only colleges that do not require recommendations, but—like having a solid standardized test score—the prevalence of recommendation-required colleges in the environment makes it preferable to have recommendations than to strategically avoid needing them.

Some colleges allow additional letters of recommendation, by which their admissions office means “maybe one.” Generally they do not want to read more than the minimum. As with the activities list, get your strongest points on the top and do not squander the audience’s attention with a long tail of minutae.

⚠️ Note! The Common App (etc) will ask if you want to “waive your FERPA rights.” Your FERPA rights allow you to look at what was written in your recommendations. As much as I like rights, it is a positive sign of trust in your completion of Your Task (see below) to go ahead and waive those FERPA rights. You will be guiding your teachers to the recommendations you want; post hoc review should not be necessary.

📆 Quick disclaimer: The exact timing and process for requesting recommendations is a cultural practice that can vary by school. Pay attention to when everybody around you is doing it and do likewise. Do not delay until after everybody else has flooded your teachers with their requests for recommendations to make your requests.

Counselor Recommendation

If you are my target demographic—a high-achieving low-needs public school student who is unbothered by counselor assistance—then you will not expect much from your counselor recommendation… but you should still expect to collect one. There is a high chance that you will be asked to self-report your achievements to your counselor so they can write something that seems personal to you beyond just talking about the school and zip code you will be graduating from: this is a resume or brag-sheet or whatever they want to call it, and you will keep a copy of it. That said, if you can get a few minutes to have a quick chat with your counselor:

Your counselor should know about anything in your personal life that had a detrimental impact on your grades. This includes things that hit you square on (medical emergency, late diagnosis) as well as home conditions (parental job loss or divorce, et cetera). You will put these things in the “Additional Information” section on your Common App and you want your counselor to verify it in their letter to the college.
Your counselor may be able to recommend colleges that have unusually high acceptance rates for graduates of your high school. Your counselor may feel extra-confident in writing letters to specific admissions departments that are biased in their favor. Consider adding such a college to your list: beyond the confidence boost that will improve your counselor’s writing, it will also appeal to your counselor’s professional ego.

The college admissions readers want your teachers to tell them that you are will be a ✨🌈 Perfect Ray of Absolute Fucking Sunshine ☀️✨ that brings utter joy to your professors’ classrooms.

Your Task

Your entire junior year should be spent doing the emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) to demonstrate this performative skill to your choice of teachers with intent to solicit recommendations from them when the time comes.

Keep a journal of your particularly positive in-class experiences with teachers; you will refer to this when preparing to ask for the recommendation.

While you likely will not need more than 2 recommendations, you should be preparing up to 4 teachers for recommendation writing: teachers quit, or retire, or get laid off due to tightening budget constraints, or have nervous breakdowns, or are teaching a class that is much harder than you expected which sours your interest in their advocacy, et cetera. Extra preparation is your insurance.

Also: do not ignore the teachers who “just didn’t like you” when you were an insufferable 9th grader. 11th grade is a great time to demonstrate how much you have grown and matured and (most) adults will happily replace any prior memories of your immaturity with your far-improved final-form behavior if you can deploy it consistently.

Your Roster

When choosing teachers who you may want to solicit recommendations from, ask yourself these questions and prefer the teachers that get the most Yes ✅ answers. Questions 1-3 are for the beginning of 11th grade; use the entire list when readying your requests for recommendations.

Is this teacher teaching me in a high-rigor college preparatory course? (Prefer junior- and senior-year teachers to get the high-rigor college prep courses.)
Is the course aligned to a major I’ve made clear in my application, or represents a Math/Science capability, or an English/History capability? (The choice to stack or spread recommendations by capability depends on what sort of college experience you are looking to have.)
Does the teacher also know me in another context, allowing them to add a supplemental paragraph about my other qualities? (The teacher who is also a coach or also a club advisor gets a bonus point here.)
Can I remind them of a really great anecdote they can share about me that aligns with a wider motif I am baking into my application? (This is where you review your journal.)
Will they be excited for me when I tell them about my college plans? (If they are excited for you, they will write a better letter.)
Can I count on them to do this task for me by the application deadline of my choosing? (This should be a Yes by the time you got here, but there may be teachers in a state of “Additional Information” you need to watch out for, as it were…)

Sample Process/Timing

At the school where I volunteer, the process is split in two:

The request happens in the Spring🌸 shortly before school lets out for summer, and then
The recommendations get written in the Fall🍁 shortly after school resumes, with priority given to earlier deadlines.

No matter how your school works through this process, ensure that there is at least a month between when you make the request and the deadline your teacher needs to deliver by.

Preparing the Ask

Do not get yourself wound up over asking for a recommendation: if you successfully completed Your Task (see above) then your teacher will be eager to perform this task for you, their most favorite-est student of the year.

But it is a good idea to plan out each request (one per teacher!), and there is a simple formula you can use, so let’s walk through that.

Step 1: Start a draft email. 🛑 Do not send it yet! 🛑 You will make your initial request in person and then use this email as the follow-up once your request is accepted. But planning your request as the follow-up from your request should help you keep things clear. 🤞

Step 2: Write out your request. Here is the formula I recommend:

Dear (Teacher’s name), I really [pick one: enjoyed, learned a lot, was fascinated by, grew in] your (Class name) course this year.

Here is a straightforward salutation with a touch of flattery, but not so much to be insincere. If you feel the need to be insincere then, frankly, you probably failed at Your Task and should choose a different teacher.

As you probably know, I’m intending to [choose: apply (optionally early) to Top Choice College OR study Top Choice Major (optionally at Top Choice College)].

If your teacher is excited for your future, they will write a better recommendation for you. Spend a bit of time on this line to customize it to your teacher: some may want to know that they inspired your choice of future studies, others may want to know which college you are aiming for.

I would deeply appreciate it if you would write a [optional, pick one: strong, glowing] letter of recommendation for me.

There is the request. Feel free to rephrase it as a question; when you say it, say it with a question mark? Also, some people think the adjective “strong” will get a better letter of recommendation, as if asking a teacher was like prompting ChatGPT; I think it is silly, you spent months on Your Task to not need that adjective. Besides, “glowing” is clearly the superior adjective.

I really want the college to know about the (Virtue #1) and (Virtue #2) in particular that you’ve seen in me during our time together.

Recall that the common virtues colleges are looking for are: intellectual curiosity or love of learning, maturity or consistent engagement, altruism or service to others, creativity or initiative, and—for the classroom—collaboration. Your first virtue should harmonize well with the big claims you are making in your application, the second virtue should add something that you are not bragging about elsewhere. If you are uncertain, choose “intellectual curiosity” as your Virtue #1—it should be showing up elsewhere in your application—and “collaboration” as your Virtue #2—that virtue is commonly ignored throughout the rest of the application.

You may recall, for instance, (that one time on that particular assignment). Or (some other time in a different circumstance).

Here is where you are mining your journal to specifically feed your teacher very brief but memorable anecdotes they can—and will now be likely to!—use when describing your virtues to the college. Be sure that your first anecdote focuses on your time in the classroom even if the teacher knows you in other contexts.

I can provide supplemental information from my [pick one: resume, brag sheet] if it will help.

Generally you do not want to have to do this: prefer teachers who will have enough to say based on what you have given them and your successfully completing Your Task. But some teachers may want it, so do offer it.

Thank you so much! Should I send you a reminder about this after school starts again in the Fall, or would you like an email about it now, or both?

Your teacher should be mentally metering out the number of recommendations they agree to write (so ⚠️ get in early when request season starts! ⚠️) but make it easy for them to say Yes to you by promsing to send them a polite reminder at suitable point(s) in the future, adjusted to your school’s process and timeline.

You are now ready to make the ask.

Making the Ask

Put on your best ✨Sparkling Optimism✨ face (don’t forget the Eye Twinkles—this is an emotional labor internship!) and catch your teacher right after they have finished one task but before they can move on to something else and ask them if you can talk to them for just a couple of minutes.

If they say No ➡️ Ask when you can come back and make a plan for that. Then repeat this process at that time.

If they say Yes ➡️ Go through the request script you prepared (see above), pausing briefly on each point to gauge your teacher’s reaction and/or note where they actively engage on their own.

When you mention your virtues, do they suggest something else?
When you list the anecdotes, do they remember what you are talking about or suggest a different event?

If they start taking the lead on what they want to write for you, make a note of it and update your draft email before you send it out.

When they (presumably) Agree ➡️ be sure to get you your closing line, both thanking and asking when to send them a reminder (if the teacher did not already tell you when to send them an email). Again, adjust the reminder timing to what is relevant for your school’s process and timeline.

Now go back and update your draft email to replace the asking line with a gratitude line like this:

Thank you for agreeing write a [optional, pick one: strong, glowing] letter of recommendation for me [optional: by Deadline] as we discussed on (Date).

And replace the closing line with the requested reminder schedule like this:

Thank you so much! I’m sending you this reminder now as you’ve requested (and will also send it again Later, also as you’ve requested).

Save this email so you can send it out when the teacher requested it, which might be both immediately and also once school is back in session, but a month before you need the recommendation to be delivered in any event.

Be prepared to visit the teacher (again with your best ✨Sparkling Optimism✨) to remind them if they are moving slow and/or anything in the process goes wrong.

⚠️ Be sure they have a reminder 10 days ahead of your deadline. ⚠️

Once the recommendation is made ➡️ make a point to give an in-person thank you, along with probably a thank you note and one of your printed senior photos if you have them and see that the teacher collects them. (I recommend delaying appreciation gifts and social connections until you have graduated, but follow your local custom.)

For a different opinion on soliciting recommendations, here is College Essay Guy’s freshly updated video.

Other Recommendations

It is rare to need an external recommendation from a mentor, coach, pastor, or manager at a job, internship, or volunteer position for your college application. But if you are in this unusual position: this recommendation should relate to something you included in your application and also extend beyond what you have put in your application, just like your teachers’ recommendations with Virtue #1 and Virtue #2. The form of your request (in person with email followup and possible supplemental material) will be very similar to what you did for your teacher requests, but the timing is less consistent: either at the end of the working relationship or a month before you need it done.

You may also want to get/accumulate recommendations from research mentors and managers on your LinkedIn profile as described near the end of that document, unrelated to your college application.

References

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.