Letter of rec or character reference?

invader71
Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:04:20 +0000

From what I understand, the letter of recommendation is from a teacher and discusses your academic performance and potential while a character reference discusses your personality and other non academic aspects.

I think the teacher you asked is correct in this situation for asking to do a character reference as opposed to a letter of recommendation since she was more of an advisor/boss than your actual academic teacher.

As far as i’ve heard the both letters are pretty similar but make sure you have another recommendation from an academic teacher who can attest to your potential to succeed at a college level.

One of my letters of recommendations was done by my Band teacher which counted as a teacher but i believe it was more of a personal character reference, the other recommendation was from my physics teacher.

The Universities that you are applying for should accept character references as long as you have another academic reference along with it. I really do not see a character reference hurting your chance of admission at a selective uni.

In terms of what makes a good recommendation I can’t really speak on that since I was not able to read the ones that my teachers wrote for me. However I was accepted to all of the schools I applied to so i figure it helped rather than hurt. The key when asking a teacher for a recommendation is finding the teacher who you believe knows you the best as a person and student and who you think would know you enough to write more than a generic letter.

PM me if you have any other questions.