Parents of the HS Class of 2026

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
2690

I think it depends on the type of schools on your son’s list. My S23 had an unusual set of letters: sophomore year chemistry teacher, senior year physics teacher, and orchestra teacher. However, he was applying for engineering majors, mostly at public universities. If he had been applying to tippy-top privates, it probably would have been prudent for him to stick with the conventional wisdom of one STEM, one humanities, and nobody from sophomore year.

I do think that the senior year physics teacher turned out to be a surprisingly good choice. That teacher specializes in AP Physics classes, which are only taken by seniors at our school. He doesn’t usually get a chance to write a lot of recs, because most students pick teachers they had in junior year. So he was enthusiastic about writing a rec, and there was enough time in the fall semester for him to get to know S before recs were due.

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2691

I also think it depends on the school and what they are requesting but our private school GC highly recommended following the conventional wisdom of one STEM, one humanity and junior year +.

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2692

C26’s list of schools currently are those that only require one rec letter or none. (One of the “nones” is frustration as it’s a reach and I’m sure a rec letter would help…) So even though they are supposed to ask for 2 they may just stick with one. Our school counselor (large, pretty well regarded public) also recommends one humanities/social science and one STEM, junior year or later.

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2693

Many teachers will ask students for a resume or “brag sheet” to help personalize their letter, so that can help in a case where the student feels a teacher doesn’t know them super well. If there is a humanities teacher who can speak to how strong a student he is, and he’s able to spend the rest of the year interacting a bit more with them (we have a few weeks left still here, but not sure if there’s time where you are), perhaps that could be an option.

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2694

This was my D26’s dilemma. Her chem and bio teachers know her the best, but realized that she didn’t want to come off that science biased so her Spanish teacher will be writing her other letter.

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2695

Okay - personal opinion ONLY here - but I’d pick the teachers who really know your kid. In the days of AI written recommendation letters - a letter than is very personal and specific to your student is really important.
Disclaimer - we are currently trying to figure out a similar situation. My kid’s strongest letters will also be from her STEM teachers, but her junior year English teacher is also a possibility -so we are debating.

ETA: The consensus really seems to be one STEM, one humanities. Sigh - if only one is required - -could you submit the other STEM as an optional letter?

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2696

S26 currently only has schools on his list that require one letter (or none). But if he ends up needing two, they will come from two social science teachers, who will both write strong and personalized letters. It’s pretty clear from his transcript anyway that he is not a STEM guy. It’s a shame that his entrepreneurship teacher last semester was a total dud (and also left the school unannounced in mid April). Since he is applying for business, that might have been a good one in theory.

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2697

If only one rec is required, I personally think it would be fine to use any core teacher as an optional rec.

For schools with only one required rec, S23 used his physics teacher, and then included his orchestra teacher in the optional rec slot (if they allowed an arts teacher), or in the “other recommender” slot (if they didn’t consider arts teacher to be a “teacher”), since she had known him since 8th grade and her letter was super strong.

Adding this thought, too:

You’ll never know in the end why a student is accepted or rejected, but if rejection happens, it’s natural to look back and think about these choices in retrospect. My S didn’t get any rejections, but he had a couple of deferrals / waitlists, and it made him feel more comfortable at the time to know that his recommendations came from teachers who really knew him well. He didn’t have a regret or worry that maybe one was lukewarm or generic.

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2698

Most college websites I’ve looked at say an optional letter is fine.

Edit: I may have misunderstood what you were asking. I think 2 strong rec letters are better than one, even if they are both stem they are likely coming at the student from different angles (participation in a math class is likely to be quite different from that in a lab class, for example)

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2699

100%. In the list of “we don’t know why D19 was accepted to her reach”, one of the possibilities is that she is sure the teacher rec she used was a very strong one. It could also be that one factor didn’t swing it but a combination of rec letter, good essays, our nationality being way under-represented* could all have added up to enough to push her over the edge … maybe shows the importance of really trying to take care of all the “extras” once the academics and ECs are baked in.

*ok, obviously we have no control over this. It’s also not going to be a swing factor for C26, who has been here since 1st grade; D19’s common app essay partly dealt with the experience of immigrating as a teen.

2700

If the college has actual slots in the app for optional letters, I don’t think it can hurt to fill in as many slots as the student has strong letters :grin:

But we also found that a lot didn’t have slots for an optional letter, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to burden AOs with extra letters or other material emailed separately. (I’ve heard of students doing that…)

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2701

Yep. NYU asked for one and said not more than 3 (when D19 was applying, not sure current policy) and in the admissions presentation said they got way too many people who seemed to value quantity over both quality and following instructions…

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2702

Yes -following instructions! I see applicants for JOBS that don’t seem to know how to follow instructions. It’s an automatic no. Same for assignments submitted (I teach) - failure to follow instructions is one of the reasons students do poorly.

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2703

I saw this book at a store and glanced through it. It’s a short book but pretty much every chapter is a combination of a) follow instruction b) show up to class c) submit your work on time.
I know S26 struggles with a and c all the time but he’s slowly getting better.

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2704

I would also really encourage you parents to talk with your students about “How” to go about asking for LORs… strategy in timing of the initial request and follow ups, prepping an abbreviated CV to pass along to give your student even more ‘depth’ for the person writing, and give some examples of the way(s) to go about it and even consider doing some role play practice.

It’s one thing if a teacher or other stellar resource straight up tells your student “I know college applications are coming, and I would be very happy to write a strong recommendation for you” but that’s not going to happy all that often.

More often the student is approach the teacher and with the limited number of LORs to be submitted (usually one or two), it’s crucial to be certain the writer really wants to write one and it’s going to be a strong one…

There’s a world of different between…

“Mrs. Jones, I’m applying to colleges and would like you to write a letter of recommendation for me. Can you do it, I really don’t have anyone else I feel I can ask?”

or along those lines as opposed to…

“Mrs. Jones, I am going to be applying to a number of competitive schools with an intended major in your STEM focus area. While there are several teachers I feel would be good references, I know you understand how crucial a very strong letter of reference can be, especially for schools which allow only one. You are my first choice. I would like to ask if you, in your knowledge of me as a student and person, would feel comfortable writing on my behalf or would you suggest I ask for additional references?”

No Joke - not everyone who consents to writing a reference letter can write well, or write well about the student, and more often than you’d think, students ask the wrong folks for LORs and end up not just getting a “meh” letter (They are above average / In my passing familiarity / In our brief interactions) but actually get bad references. You would hope someone who can’t write a strong letter would just say “No, I think you should ask someone else more familiar with you”, but sometimes they say yes and write bland, and sometimes they say yes and send it ding letters.

Thirty years ago, I sat as the Student Representative for the admissions panel in Professional School for two admissions cycles. Each applicant needed TWO letters (One academic / One practitioner in the field) and were encouraged to submit three. About 25% of the applicants had at least one “Meh” letter, which may not have hurt them if the other two were quite strong. About 10% of applicants received a letter which clearly seemed to indicate (or straight up said) “Don’t take this person” and those are really hard to overlook. I’m not kidding.

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2705

D26’s biology teacher did this the beginning of junior year. Took a lot of pressure off.

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2706

Our school college counselor also suggested asking the teachers something along the lines of “do you feel you know me well enough to write me a good recommendation letter” - I think the feeling here as you say is that a lukewarm letter is generally not well-received by adcoms.

The other things they were told were: to ask all (including the guidance counselor) in person, and to understand and respect that it can take a teacher quite a while to do it properly and they are doing it unpaid on their own time.

The teachers C26 asked both sent versions of a brag sheet to fill in, also emphasizing that they really do take care to write the letter so it helps to know as much about the student other than what they see in the classroom as well. They also both asked for “real” deadlines for first application due (in other words, trust them and don’t give them a date two etc weeks earlier than they need). And the counseling office has both a student and parent brag sheets to fill in, which is understandable given we have 1 counselor per about 350 students at the school.

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2707

Thank you for all the replies. Really appreciate the discussion. Gives us food for thought.

Ours is a pretty big, well regarded public high school, S26’s graduating class will have around 650 students. His AP Bio and AP Lang teachers already told the kids at the beginning of the school year that they only write for a few kids and they will pick which students to write for, which is fine. Only problem is they only inform at literally the last week of school! So the dilemma for the kids is should they ask other teachers in case they are not picked by the AP teachers. S26 luckily has one teacher who really likes him, so he is set with that. Since we don’t have a college list yet, we aren’t sure if he will be needing more. He is definitely not applying to selective schools. And UCs and CSUs don’t ask for rec letters, so I think he’ll stick with one teacher from sophomore year because he really knows S26 and had really good words for him at the end of last year. That would be better than getting a letter from someone who barely knows him.

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2708

11th grade is now all officially done! Report cards go out next Tuesday, so only a few more days of torture before we find out grades. Last day of school award ceremony was this morning. D26 didn’t get anything. That’s ok. The AP English Lit teacher is quitting to be a stay at home mom (just had a baby a few weeks ago!). We’re glad that D26 was able to have her as a teacher because she was awesome.

Apparently the VEX Robotics club had 5 teams this year. D26 is glad that she chose not to continue with that…it was very time intensive, with competitions almost every weekend.

One of the seniors was awarded a Stamps scholarship. Lots of interesting colleges in the list that seniors will be attending: Rice, Princeton, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UCSD, UCSB, MIT, among several others.

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2709

D26 had her last final yesterday. Can’t believe she is now a senior and will be applying to schools in the Fall! She is a recruited athlete for soccer and currently has two D3 offers and waiting for pre reads at her top choices in July. I will say it will be a much more relaxing senior year if she gets a positive pre read in July and can announce her verbal commitment! Way different from my D19 and D22 and all the stress of applying senior year. D19 ended up at UCLA and D22 is finishing her junior year at Cal poly. Proud of D26 for ending Junior year with a perfect 4.0 uw in all honors, APs and dual enrollments and ranked 6th out of 355 in her class. She will take the ACT one more time but thinking she will be applying test optional. Her score was ok but not good enough for the high academic schools she is looking at. My last one at home and will be so relieved when we have a commitment!

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