@jedwards70 It depends on the colleges, again.
For us, state schools want only 1 letter, or the letter is optional. One does not want the recommendation letter at all.
Honors program and scholarships do want one letter from the teacher related to the major.
Smaller private universities and LACs want letters from two teachers.
@jedwards70, We just had a counselor meeting yesterday. She said that S needed 2 LORs, one from the humanities/English side and one from the STEM side of the classes. He is also asking his robotics mentor to write a 3rd LOR for the schools that may allow (or require) the additional LOR. Our school uses Naviance. The counselor or school principal writes a separate letter from the teachers. So in total, that is 3 required letters and 1 optional letter. She also said to consider schools with <20% acceptance reaches, schools with >35%-50% acceptance matches, and schools with >50% acceptance safeties (she used different terms, but same meanings.) She also said that she has seen a decline in available merit aid as more kids apply and more schools trend towards needs-based aid. That doughnut hole keeps getting bigger and bigger…
My dd’s only outside teachers are 2 of her foreign language teachers. Every other subject she has either taught herself at home or has worked with me. (She taught herself pre-cal and cal using resources like Thinkwell.) Her French teacher’s English is extremely limited, so we need to ask her to have someone help her translate her letter. Her Russian teacher, otoh, will be eager to write one for her. (She totally disapproves of dd’s school options, though. She is used to students going to UChicago, Harvard, and Berkeley. Dd’s list makes her crazy. Dd has had to stop talking about the schools we visit bc she will rant about them not being good enough.)
@2muchquan Ugh, we got the “brag sheets” form too - which both D and I have stared at and don’t really know what to say on it. Bragging is not our strong suit around here!
D plans to ask her AP English Lang teacher - she’s also D’s Key Club advisor and they get along really well. She’s a young teacher too, so still very enthusiastic about it all, haha. The other likely suspect is her precalc teacher who will also be her AP Calc AB teacher next year. He’s not the most effusive guy, but he likes D and she is planning on going into science or engineering so we need a STEM person. Other possibility is AP Chem teacher. It’s a tossup between them - they’re both kind of stiffs, lol.
@thermom I hear you about the ‘bragging’. Not our strength either, but I think in this case it’s pretty important. I wouldn’t tell the counselor things she already knows (e.g., NHS), but definitely let if fly about things D’s counselor may be unaware of: a job, outside awards, non-school related (time-intensive) ECs? I guess I’m talking from the perspective of a GC that knows my D pretty well. We have met several times, and I email the GC at least monthly, so we are on first-name basis. Poor her! :)) She’s been totally great and invested.
TL;DR: I guess my point is that it’s important to brag, just this one time. The teacher or counselor won’t look at your brag sheet and say: “Wow, they are really modest!! I’m sure that kid did much more, I’m going to give them the best rec ever!”. No, they are busy and appreciate the help.
@mtrosemom What do you do if you don’t know what you want your major to be? Get one humanities teacher and one STEM teacher? For a community mentor, I would hope one of his ADs at his ballet studio would write a recommendation. I’m not sure how reachy he is going to go with his applications. He doesn’t want to be as stressed in college as he has been in high school.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I wondered what homeschooled kids did for recommendations. She is such an accomplished kid with her languages. It stinks that they need all of these letters of recommendations.
At this point, he is auto-admit for a state flagship school, it is looking better and better from a difficulty of applying standpoint. I can completely see him getting his admissions letter early and calling it a day early in his senior year.
S is planning to use same teachers he asked summer programs, but he wasn’t successful with those programs! Is there anything specific he needs to ask the teachers other than giving them his resume?
@snoozn I do not believe the Fairhaven classes are available to non Fairhaven students. Similar to the Honors program that way. The living community however, outside of either one dorm, is. It’s a neat little self contained community of it’s own in the woods…kind of made me think of a nice summer camp/condo resort lol.
It is a separate/additional application, competitive and requires and interview (WWU regular admission does not) as well as 2 LOR’s. I think the main WWU app is only 1 LOR.
@jedwards70, The counselor said one LOR from "each side of the house (STEM and non-STEM) regardless of what the kids is majoring in. It shows academic well roundedness. S plans to major in CS. He asked his physics teacher and his English teacher(!). He works very hard in English, but doesn’t shine, if you know what I mean. But if you don’t know what you want to mahor in, pick the teachers who know you best from humanities and STEM, or the ones you hear write the best LORs.
@srk2017 Does he have any other choices for which teachers he uses for LoRs? Some teachers are just not very good writers. Our GC wanted to know which teachers S was planning on using, and she said she’d tell us if any of the ones we named weren’t very good at that type of writing. She didn’t want to give a list of the bad ones, of course. If your S’s teachers want to write good recommendations letters but don’t know how, there are resources someone (the GC?) could point them to. For example, MIT has good information: http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs
My daughter has one rec letter in hand from her biotech teacher (it was needed to apply for a summer program, and the teacher said she’d be glad to use it as the basis for a letter in the fall) and, for variety in the cases a second letter is needed, her drama teacher.
@Ynotgo - Thanks for the info. He has two other science teachers to ask (they are his EC coaches also). Pretty much everyone asks the math teacher, so not sure how much he can differentiate between the students.
S plans to ask for LoRs from his AP Physics B teacher, his AP English Lang teacher, and his research mentor. He’d thought about his APUSH/Debate teacher, but decided on the English teacher instead.
For summer programs, he had LoRs from the same physics teacher, his Math Circle teacher, and his research mentor.
As far as I know (and I might be wrong) he doesn’t have any colleges on his list that want 2 LoRs from the STEM side. Some of you mentioned asking a math, science, and humanities teacher. Do you know of any schools that want both math and science? I’ve heard that things can get messed up in Naviance if you have more LoRs than you need and the teachers don’t know which schools to apply theirs to.
Our school uses Naviance, so the Brag Sheet he needs to do is in there. There’s a question for me on the Brag Sheet, so I have an essay to write, too.
@Ynotgo Interesting. D’s HS uses Naviance as well, but I’ve not heard a mention of the brag sheet in there. I know different districts/schools utilize different features, but that would seem to make sense. Also, I’ve not heard of the issue of too many of a certain type of LOR in Naviance. Our teachers don’t even know which schools are being applied to. I think our students are in charge of sending the LORs that they want to send. I’ll have to investigate a little more on this I guess.
@Ynotgo, Our counselor specifically said that Naviance only allows the school to upload two letters to the LOR section. A third letter has to be scanned and uploaded as a pdf file to a supplemental area in Naviance. I haven’t come across any schools that specifically ask for a math and science teacher LOR. Most I have looked at want only one from the math/science side.
My S’s math teacher is his club adviser and his 3 science teachers (Bio, Chem and Physics) are science teams coaches and all 4 subjects he is doing two years, so how to figure out who writes good LORs Our school also uses Naviance but I didn’t see brag sheet. I will ask GC today.
Different topic, but I just took S to get a meningitis B vaccine (1st of 2). I wanted him to have it before spending 6 weeks in a dorm this summer. And, I’ll want him to have it before college in any case.
Our local UC had an outbreak of meningitis B in 2013, and there have been outbreaks at a few other universities in the US. Chances are really low that he’d get it, of course, but one of the poor kids that got meningitis B here in town had to have both feet amputated.
At our school the advice is one letter from the GC and the other letter from a teacher of student’s choice. I think my son is going to try to get one from the lady who teaches one of his business classes and helps with DECA. I think getting him a letter showing his interest in studying business would help his cause more than an english teacher or science teacher. He does pretty good in math, but I wouldn’t say he loves it or excels at it, so no letter from those teachers either.
Regarding Naviance, the more I poke around in Naviance the more I wish I could see other school’s data too, not just our students results. I wish it would let us select a certain number of “Partner” schools or something, that would allow us a little more insight into the college selection process. Our school goes back 5 years of data, but with some of the smaller schools there is just not enough data to compare.
@srk2017 That does make it a difficult choice with 4 STEM teachers to choose from. S would guess that his AP Chem and Bio teachers aren’t very good writers, based on being kind of geeky guys and a little awkward about one-on-one conversations. And, his Calc teacher in 10th has kind of a “cold” personality. His physics teacher is much more personable than any of the others.
He’s known his Math Circle teacher since 4th grade, but he feels like colleges prefer a “real teacher.” She does write a lot of LoRs for homeschoolers, so I understand how difficult it can be to figure out LoRs in that situation. If we run across a college or program that wants 2 STEM recommendations, she would be happy to update her summer program LoR.
@RightCoaster I like the idea of sharing Naviance across schools to get more data. Maybe district wide? Also, I think you should double-check all the colleges he is looking at to make sure none of them want 2 teacher recommendations plus the GC recommendation. Of course, some won’t need any LoRs; the University of California and CalState systems don’t accept LoRs, for example.
I like the idea of sharing data across the district at a minimum. Many of the schools on our list have zero data in Naviance as no one has applied there in the last 3 years, or very small data points, like 3 kids in the last 3 years which really isn’t all that much more helpful, especially if the stats don’t match up at all.
As for LOR’s they don’t want our kids asking till school starts. I am not sure why, because of that, S is pretty resistant to asking now. And honestly, between being out of the country for 2 weeks, AP testing and now the school musical, it may not be the best time for him to ask, better to either wait till the very end of the year (we still have 4 weeks) or right when school starts.
Our school is vauge on the numbers, it’s basically ask if you need them and for how many you need. We have discussed who might be good, his PreCalc teacher and US History Teacher are probably the best bets at the moment but we’d love to have it be his APES teacher and AP Lang teacher next year as alternates. Problem is, while he has done a lot of outside classroom activity with both, he hasn’t had either as a teacher since freshman year. I suspect 3 out of those 4 are good writers but no clue on the PreCalc teacher. One school asks for 3 letters so if that stays in the mix, we will need 3. Unclear on what will go through Naviance or not though.