Sombre

Hi,

I'm nearly done with the application process! (finally!)

From hereon, everything should go rather smoothly. Only a matter of getting the papers printed, stamped/signed, and mailed!

What's left (my essays aside) is the counselor recommendation. That school hasn't sent any students to the US for college - to the best of my knowledge (but I could be wrong!) - and odds are they will write me a very generic letter. I'm scared that they might just take another letter they wrote for another student, say one who applied to the UK, and just replace his/her name with mine.

While I wasn't told this explicitly, it was strongly hinted that I should write a draft myself, and then they'd modify it as they'd deem fit, and have the principal (the school doesn't have a counselor) sign it. As far as I'm concerned, that's not very ethical. The right thing to do would be having the counselor (i.e, principal in this case) write the letter.

I'm not sure what to do with this. My initial plan was to print out part of MIT's guide (Writing Recommendations | MIT Admissions), so that they'd have a starting point. Maybe I'm just being very paranoid, but for all I know, they're just gonna end up giving me a 'stock letter.' Even a letter which is like Mike's (on the MIT page) would be great.

Any advice?

Thanks

Sombre

No one?

B@r!um?

b@r!um

I do have a life outside of CC, you know?

It is completely legitimate to give your counselor both a guideline to the general format of a recommendation letter, as well as suggestions for specific content. Many American teachers and counselors ask for suggestions too. (They don't know how you are trying to portray yourself in your application, and they may have already forgotten about accomplishments that you are quite proud of.) I was actually sitting next to my counselor as he composed my letter!

In an ideal world, teachers would write their letters themselves. However, in the real world teachers sometimes lack the time or motivation to do that. If your counselor would prefer you to write a draft of your own letter, by all means write the draft. Otherwise, don't be disappointed if you get a generic one-paragraph letter.

Remember, writing recommendation letters is not part of their job description. It's a personal favor.

b@r!um

P.S. Don't forget that your counselor has the opportunity to submit a "school profile" as part of the secondary school report. If there's anything you'd like admissions officers to know about your school, use the opportunity to tell them!

Of course you'd have to write the school profile yourself. I would not expect my German principal to sit down and do that.

To give you a starting point, here's the school profile of my local high school: www.paly.net/info/profile.pdf

Sombre

Thank you, and for what it's worth, I didn't mean to be rude. This reminded me of this webpage I found concerning astronomy grads students. Thought you might be interested. (http://jjcharfman.tumblr.com/post/33...correspondance)

Fair enough. I'll use the MIT guide, write a "draft", and bring that to them. I'll definitely PM you when I get the decision results.

The school report seems like a great idea, but I don't know if I'd have enough information to put in that. It will be, at most, a one-page document. Even then, I'm not sure I'd be able to fill it all. The only useful information I can think of including is the number of subjects available to students at O-Level, and A-Level, and the various (read: few) subject combinations available.

But then, this is briefly outlined in my transcript (i.e, 3 A2 subjects, 2 AS subjects, and my year was only allowed to take X O-Levels instead of Y, for example)), and with my grades being what they are (I did take the exams in less than the usual time, depending on how one looks at it), I'm not sure if having the school's number of A-grades received for A-Levels would help me at all!

I suppose I could just omit that part, but then focus on the extracurricular opportunities available (read: close to zero), which would, I suppose, show the initiative I took with the ones I am involved in?