Lets talk letters of recommendation

glassharmonica
Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:10:24 +0000

Is there way in the common app. to select a letter of recommendation from anyone other than a high school teacher? My daughter is basically an unknown entity among her teachers.

My daughter went to a cyber school and applied to a number of BFA and BA schools. She used outside rec letters from playwriting teachers she had studied with at a local college and her acting coach, all through the Common Ap. When you fill out the form, you fill in the email address of the teacher and they receive an email prompt. You can also decide which college gets which recommendation letter (so, in the case of schools that explicitly only want academic recommendations, you can make sure that that is the one they get.) Some schools accept only one or two letters, some require one or two but accept more. It’s different for every school, something that you will find as you go through the Common Ap.

There was some overlap, but we also snail-mailed artistic recommendation letters from her acting coaches and playwrighting organization to the drama departments of most school she applied to. She also sent an artistic supplement-- e.g. a DVD of a film she made-- to certain schools. Was it helpful? Well, the first thing the auditor said to her at one audition was that he had watched the DVD. This was a “top 5” acting conservatory to which she eventually gained admission.

As for confidentiality of letters mailed separately: provide your recommenders with a SASE and ask them to sign across the seal. Then, you can put everything together in a single pack for each individual school (i.e., all the letters you are sending) and mail it in one larger envelope. I teach at a college and do a lot of grad school recommendations. While most of them are now online, there are some that still use printed recommendations and this is the standard procedure.