| hi captain backfire
1) yes it's possible, but I guess in most cases it doesn't reflect too well on the applicant. Because the admission officers will wonder why the student can't find a teacher in his last 2 years of high school to write for him. I did ask one of my sec 3/4 teacher to write for me, but only because i knew it was a risk worth taking. I knew that the testimonial would be a million times better than any testimonial my JC teachers would write for me. and in my case, my sec 3/4 teacher had already left the school and went on to China to teach in international schools there, but it seemed that the admission officers didn't mind? If you need a frame of reference: Vassar, Tufts, Brown, NYU and Boston U didn't mind. That being said, my high school counsellor's recommendation was the faculty head in JC, and my other teacher's recommendation was by my form teacher in JC. So the majority of my recommendations were from JC teachers. So I guess 1 secondary school teacher recommendation alone may not be too good on its own.
2) I gave my teachers my personal statement, so that they will understand how I am presenting myself in the application, and won't write something completely different about me. I also gave my teachers my Curriculum Vitae so that they have stuff to refer to, and to remind them of what I did in school. And of course all the forms they had to fill up, I passed it to them, labeled with deadlines and with their own self stamped envelopes. |