My son is a junior and so is getting ready to talk to teachers about providing letters of recommendation for his college applications. He is planning on a major in International Relations or Economics with a possible minor in Theatre or Dance. He has focused on social studies courses in high school and theatre/dance in his ECs, plus Model UN and Interact. He’s had the same teacher for freshman year social studies, APUSH this year, and an elective Political Science class. He’s done very well in all three classes (so far) and gets along very well with the teacher who appreciates his perspective and knowledge (he is very into world geography and world political history). However, this teacher is also my sister-in-law, so his aunt. So we are torn on whether he should ask her to be a recommender for him. His 10th grade social studies teacher is no longer at the school.
He does have another teacher he can ask. He took Physics last semester (we have block scheduling) with this teacher and really enjoyed the class. He is taking an elective in Astronomy with him again this semester and signed up to take AP Physics with him next year. So he will definitely ask him as well but I’m worried that Physics is a bit outside of his interest area so would think we would use this teacher as a second recommendation.
Asking an English teacher would be a good alternative but honestly he doesn’t have anyone there that he thinks would be able to really speak to him and his interests. He hasn’t had any teacher more than once, so with our block scheduling that means he’s only had any English teacher for one semester each. He’s also struggled in those classes more than others, although his grades are still good. He just didn’t connect with any of his English teachers
He has a Math teacher that he could ask but the Physics teacher knows him better and having a Math and Physics teacher do his recommendations seems odd for his intended majors
So, looking for feedback/thoughts about which teachers would be better for him to ask. Thanks!
For colleges asking for two recommendations, having one in math or science along with one in social studies or humanities should be fine (and may be preferred at some colleges). So including the physics or math teacher should be fine.
But it seems that the issue is finding a social studies or humanities teacher other than the relative, or using the relative as the social studies recommender.
That is a delicate situation. Can he get advice from his counselor about the ethics? My instinct says that it’s unethical to have his aunt write a letter, but its also a shame that the teacher who knows and admires him the most can’t write on his behalf.
I’m not sure this is wrong. you might ask the counselor as recommended or even a college admissions person.
I don’t see this as a conflict of interest provided the teacher provides an honest recommendation. No one will know the relationship and I wouldn’t want to infer anything nefarious taking place.
My instinct is it is fine. Teachers already have a personal relationship with their students so it is not like they are true neutrals. The question is really the quality and detail of what they write. To the extent there is any ethical issue at all, I would just make sure to disclose the relationship.
Homeschool parents write their own counselor recommendations for their own children, so I too am leaning towards it is fine to have your SIL write the LOR.
I agree to double check with the school counselor and that the relationship should be disclosed in the LOR.
I’d go with a non-relative and just avoid the whole “Despite being my nephew, I can objectively state that Joey is the most talented student I have taught in the last ten years” business.
Either your SIL downplays how great he is, or honestly says how great he is but there’s a tinge of ‘well, she’s his aunt”. He’s got other teachers. They don’t need to have known him for 17 years to write a well crafted, positive, sincere recommendation. HS teachers do this ALL THE TIME for kids they’ve only taught one class…. it is not the norm for a teacher to have had the student multiple times in most big high schools….
And most big high schools do not place nearly as high a percentage of their top students into the more selective holistic review colleges as smaller high schools. It is tough to control for everything, but it appears to me this effect would likely survive at least controls for standardized test scores.
Of course there are many, many possible factors that could help explain that. But I don’t think it is easy to rule out the possibility that differences in recommendations (both teacher and counselor) are sometimes a contributing factor.
Indeed, in general, we know there are a lot of “surprising” results when comparing the parts of applicant profiles that we can see to college admissions results. But one thing we systematically cannot see is recommendations. I tend to think this may be more of a factor in “surprising” results than many might realize, either way.
Yep. Frankly, from a broader social perspective, this strikes me as just one more way in which some families might be able to arrange a possible advantage for their kids when it comes to highly selective holistic review admissions.
But I can’t change all that. I do think, though, that every kid/parent interested in such colleges can be aware of this issue, and take what measures they can to get more competitive recommendations.
Of course part of our society’s answer to all this is we don’t need there to be what I would consider fair access to those colleges, since we have a robust public university system where just normal good recommendations and normal good activities combined with normal good transcripts and normal good test scores and so on will be enough for admissions. And that is in fact true in many circumstances, so in that sense this is a bit of a niche problem.
rich towns do and still don’t have repeat teachers - that isn’t controlling for wealth, of course.
I don’t actually find most results all that surprising, do you really? on these boards I do (as we don’t know anything, really!) but in real life I don’t so much)
So at least in my area, comparing notes I noticed there was still a discernable effect comparing admissions between the “top” private day schools to the “top” (aka wealthiest) public high schools. My understanding is the recent “Ivy-Plus” studies have found that even controlling for other stuff, private school applicants average higher non-academic ratings which then has large implications for controlled admissions rates. Like a recent working paper reported:
we show in Appendix G that students who attend non-religious private high schools receive higher non-academic ratings and are admitted to Ivy-Plus colleges at twice the rate of students with comparable test scores and demographics who attend well-resourced public high schools (Appendix Figure 17c).
In Appendix G, they report:
the share of students receiving high non-academic ratings rises from 15% to nearly 40% going from the schools with the lowest to highest admissions fixed effects, partly because schools with higher admissions fixed effects generate more positive teacher recommendation and guidance counselor letters (Appendix Figures 18c and 18d). Consistent with the results in Appendix Figure 17a, students at private high schools have much higher non-academic ratings (but no higher academic ratings) than peers with comparable test scores and demographics at other schools (Appendix Figures 17b and 17c). In short, the admissions advantage for students from the private high schools typically attended by higher-income families appears to arise not from having a stronger academic program (e.g., more advanced classes), but rather from non-academic distinctions outside the classroom.
That paper is available for download here:
Frankly I had forgotten that bit about the recommendations in Figure 18, but obviously I internalized it. So that’s maybe even more compelling evidence than I originally suggested.
By the way, not to throw fuel on a common fire, but Figure 17 is really interesting because it shows that after controls, what they call Advantaged Publics actually have the LOWEST Ivy-Plus admission rate. The average controlled rate in the study was 7.2%, and it was 5.2% at Advantaged Publics, 8.0% at Disadvantaged Publics, 8.2% at Religious Privates, and 10.4% at Non-Religious Privates (hence twice at Non-Religious Privates versus Advantaged Publics).
Of course withOUT controls, many more kids from advantaged publics end up at Ivy-Plus schools than from disadvantaged publics. But this is lending support to those who have wondered if going to a really competitive public high school is actually helping when it comes to admissions to these sorts of highly selective private colleges. They actually end up with the highest fraction of High Academic Ratings at 58.3%, but that is only a bit higher than the average rate of 56.5% (Non-Religious Privates are at 54.8%). But as reported in the text, they end up with the lowest rate of High Non-Academic Ratings at 22.4%, versus 25.1% average and 30.7% Non-Religious Private.
For sure, but to try to bring it back home–given all this, I would again personally not lightly give up the sort of teacher recommendation that might actually stand out from most good recommendations. Yes, a disclaimer that the recommender was related could undermine that effect, but maybe not, and I do think the evidence is it is worth a shot.
You’d have to be Ernest Hemingway to write an essay with a disclaimer that the student was your nephew but you are still quite objective about his wonderful qualities. If the teacher in question is a gifted writer- then sure. Maybe worth the risk. But most HS teachers are not Hemingway. And what will stand out in the recommendation is NOT how wonderful the student is, but that the Aunt is the one writing the recommendation- as if there aren’t a bunch of other teachers in the school who know and like the kid??? Why why why?
Have a kid at a top day school and a very good public so scoir data to both
money is still a big factor here and I think close to an equalizer in differences in relative outcomes- more money at day school AND can see bias for a very few schools to the day schools and a few I’d say against- one top 20 seems to hate the day school - makes no sense etc. others seems to lean a little towards day school - but their stats are insanely good so also very justified -and we know even at need blind they can see job titles and school names and hidden wealth markets - private school is a huge wealth marker - even more than rich town name
Wow, this became a really interesting conversation. Thanks for sharing such interesting insights!
I think the crux of the issue for us is that he has no other social studies teacher to ask, not necessarily that he needs to have had the teacher multiple times to request a recommendation. But we are a smaller, rural school so it isn’t uncommon that certain classes, like APUSH are only taught by one specific teacher, so he couldn’t really avoid having her either, although honestly I didn’t really consider this issue until this year.
My concern about having him ask one of his English teachers (and I think one has left the school so he’s choosing from this years teacher or freshman year) is that he is a kid who likes what he likes. And shines when given the opportunity to work with those passion areas. But when he isn’t interested in something, it’s tough to get him to focus. We’ve been working on it. But he had a teacher write him a letter recently for an internal application (so she shared the letter with him) and it boiled down to “he is very engaged with things that he enjoys” with the unspoken message that he wasn’t engaged otherwise. That letter was fine for the internal selection (who got to be the student from his high school who was allowed to apply for a state-wide thing) but not what I would hope to see for a college recommendation.
I’ll follow up on suggestions to have him ask his counselor, and it might make an interesting question for him to open a conversation with admission reps about.
For those interested in school metrics, he goes to a rural high school with a regional career center that tends to be the primary focus. There are only a handful of AP classes offered and with block scheduling they are difficult to fit in, as they are often taught in only one block each year. APUSH is the only one he’s been able to fit in so far. AP Physics may not run next year as it is frequently cancelled for lack of interested students who can fit it in to their schedules. We do get students into big name schools every year - one of our seniors is going to MIT next year, and a few years back our valedictorian got into Harvard, Dartmouth, and Yale, but the majority of students who go to college and not right into a career or training program from our school go to the various regional public and small private schools within two hours from here. Our state flagship is woefully underfunded so not as great of a financial option as I see in other states and it has been doing some drastic cuts, with arts and social sciences frequently the programs taking the hit. So I’m trying to help him build a college list that includes schools with IR as a flagship program, in hopes that his major doesn’t get impacted too badly over the next few years. That list skews to selective schools but we are focused on finding and loving less selective schools as well. Hoping to give him the best chance in the application process to have some good choices at this time next year.
Another issue is whether, once a letter of recommendation identifies the teacher as his aunt, whether his grades in those three classes which you note he has done very well in, might be viewed with some suspicion (I am assuming that the relationship might not be otherwise noted on his transcript?). If so, it might be better not to even raise that as a possibility..