<p>Hi
I am applying to harvard undergraduate admissions and I need to know if is it absolutely necessary to get the teacher LOR on the school letterhead.
The teacher who will be recommending me has taught me for 5 years but has left the school now, a month ago ,which is why he wont be able to use the school letterhead
Please reply</p>
<p>Your recommendation writer would probably need to include an explanation in his or her letter and your GC should confirm the information in your SSR. (Several years ago, Harvard admitted a student (Adam Wheeler) who faked his transcripts, recommendation letters etc, so I imagine Admissions would want some kind of confirmation from your school given the circumstances.)</p>
<p>and how will that be confirmed ? Should I like type this thing in the common app profile box where it states " Write something you feel is necessary to be told and is not mentioned anywhere else in the profile" @gibby</p>
<p>What Gibby suggested should be sufficient. Just have the teacher write the recommendation, and ask your guidance counselor to explain the circumstances in their recommendation.</p>
<p>@gibby @sherpa the only reason i want the guy to recommend me is because I have a great relation with him and also he has recommended several students of my school to ivy league univs and stanford which got accepted too. So I was thinking maybe the admissions committee will take a recommendation by his name quite seriously if they have admitted students recommended by him before
comment please</p>
<p>@vanshmurad,</p>
<p>“So I was thinking maybe the admissions committee will take a recommendation by his name quite seriously …”</p>
<p>I guess it depends on how many he’s recommended, and what he writes about folks.</p>
<p>If we’re talking about writing an occasional letter every few years that reads like a standard letter of recommendation, they may not remember him. But if he’s writing letters every year for students, and has for a while, and is a compelling writer, then it’s possible that they will remember him and attach some significance to the fact that he wrote the letter.</p>
<p>@vanshmurad: Is there a reason why your GC would not want to include a note about your recommendation writer? Did he leave the school on bad terms? </p>
<p>I understand why you want the teacher to write the letter, but as notjoe said, if he’s not writing several letters a year, then Admissions may not remember him. (By way of comparison, some teachers at my son and daughter’s large public high school write 20 or more letters of recommendation per year just to Harvard. Having to write that many LoR and present each applicant in a unique light takes incredible skill and specific knowledge of the student, so I would think Harvard would remember that kind of person.)</p>
<p>Look at it another way: If Harvard is interested in you and they do not remember your recommendation writer, someone from Admissions is going to contact your GC and ask about the recommendation writer. So, your GC and recommendation writer might as well be up front about it in the first place.</p>
<p>@gibby No he left the school on really good terms. But the thing is I am from India and my GC here has less knowledge on how and where to write about the recommendation writer
Can you tell me where it is so I can guide my GC?
I would be thankful</p>
<p>@notjoe thanks for your response
it cleared many things</p>
<p>@Vanshmurad: As part of the Common Application, your GC fills out a Secondary School Report (SSR) on your behalf and they can make a note about your recommendation writer in the SSR. The current SSR is no longer available as a stand-alone pdf, but here is a copy from several years ago. See page 2: <a href=“http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/documents/UG_Admissions_SecondarySchoolReport.pdf”>http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/documents/UG_Admissions_SecondarySchoolReport.pdf</a></p>
<p>@gibby Even a teacher writes 20 LoR per year to Harvard. Harvard may have different admission officers each year for the same state. New admission officers will know nothing about the previous years’ LoR.</p>
<p>@2019mom,</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure there’s a pretty good amount of continuity from year to year on the regional committees. I know that the head of our regional admissions committee has been there for a while. When he met/spoke with each of my sons after they were accepted, he seemed to be knowledgeable about their high school.</p>
<p>I also remember speaking a few years back to an admissions officer at another highly-selective university, not Harvard, who told me that their goal is to create an institutional memory for schools that habitually send applicants. He was well aware of my sons’ high school.</p>
<p>@notjoe It is good to know that there’s a pretty good amount of continuity from year to year on the regional committees. I did not know this, since I saw some admission officers are very young (graduated in 2012, etc). Also some college only has just a single admission officer for a region, like Yale. </p>