<p>So If the college says required no of rec letters as 2 and allowed 3, if you have 3 rec letters , are you better off sending 3 or you should send 2. Same thing applies to required 1 but allowed 2,Should you send 2. Sending more than required rec letters, can that dilute other part of your application?</p>
<p>I think it’s fine to send the allowed amount as long as the added recommendation really adds something to your application. There’s no dilution effect unless the optional recommendation is not very good (e.g. written by someone who doesn’t really know your abilities, character and/or achievements first hand).</p>
<p>A supplemental LOR should BOTH be extremely strong AND address aspects about you that are different from teacher and GC LORs.</p>
<p>It makes sense that LOR’s be strong and have differentiation, but to me the $64k is how do you know they will be. My daughter has asked a couple teachers and an external source (piano) and obviously her GC to write letters where appropriate. But since you have to waive your right to see the letter we’ll never know if those recommendations letters are as strong (or unique) as we hope they’ll be.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Reread FERPA, you waive your rights to see the LOR from the college that it is submitted to. If the teacher, GC, piano teacher, etc. wants to, they can show the student the LOR and/or talk to them about what is discussed in the letter. LOR writers often want to know what specific areas the applicant wants addressed.</p>
<p>Waiting for my 64k ;).</p>
<p>I hear what most of you are saying i.e. if the extra rec letter is not going to provide additional facets of student then it is not going to help much. As you know there is no way to find out, unless teachers have shared that with you. If they have, then the decision to submit or not submit becomes simple. </p>
<p>Let’s assume we don’t know what they have written. Now I believe in most cases, teachers are not going to write anything negative, they may not write anything extra ordinary either. Given this situation, wouldn’t it be better to submit “Allowed” instead of “required”, assuming you have 3 rec letters. Reason I say this is, there is that best case chance that 3rd letter may provide extra information, at worst it may not provide anything new.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m interested in knowing if this is how colleges see it is well.</p>
<p>However, I also am under the impression that admissions officers only go through two LORs and don’t really want to waste their time reading a third unless the previous two contradict each other with something. Basically, although they allow 3, I think they’d just read the <em>allowed</em> amount, and refer to the 3rd if they really require it. So there’s the possibility that they read your weakest letter and ignore your strongest – at least that’s how I see it, but I may be completely wrong.</p>
<p>Also in the case that they DO read all 3 letters, which may or may not be more likely (again, I have no idea), I don’t think that they like to read through so many letters. It may not exactly help the applicant if they’re making the admissions officer read through so much. </p>
<p>I also think that it is not necessary to send 3 teacher reccs since EVEN IF one of your teachers doesn’t write much or writes a subpar recc, it will not hurt you. There is a large chance that they will simply judge you by the other two letters (the other teacher’s and the counselor’s) and come to the conclusion that the teacher was lazy or too busy to write much. Thus if one teacher doesn’t write an extraordinary letter, it won’t reflect badly on the student. They will just refer to the other ones.</p>
<p>I would not add an extra one unless it is regarding some activity that is notable. Read each college website and you can get an idea of how welcome these extra ones are or NOT. For instance, Brown says:</p>
<p>May I submit additional letters of recommendation?
In our experience, the required counselor recommendation and two teacher recommendations provide all we need to make a thoughtful, informed admission decision. Because additional letters tend to echo the observations we already have in hand, we do not encourage you to seek out extra letters. If, however, someone has unique knowledge of certain strengths or accomplishments that would not be addressed in the required recommendations, you are welcome to have another person write on your behalf. Keep in mind that a stack of extra letters will almost never influence an admission officer in a positive way.</p>
<p>My daughter did send one extra one, it was from a teacher who supervised her in an extensive extracurricular activity that took place over 3-1/2 years and involved museum work, field work, lab work, research, professional conferences and two extra years of science courses. We were certain that this was going to be a ‘one of the best ever’ letters (he had written me a note to that effect). In hindsight I see this could have been used as a replacement for the regular science/math teacher, so the 2 teachers + GC could have been kept. We would have never sent an extra rec from another regular class.</p>
<p>Sending LOR between the number of required and allowed are fine, but they do not want to see redundant information. Unlike what the OP said, you can actually pick teachers that would likely cover different aspects of you. For instance, you can pick teachers from different cores, different grades, and also different school activities. In addition, you may also tell the teachers who else will be writing recommendation for you. My D sent 4 LOR (maximum allowed) to 2 school that are from 1 science teacher (11th), 1 foreign language teacher (10th-12th), 1 math teacher (11th), and another math teach (9th-10th) who is the NHS adviser (10th-12th). For the other 5 schools that required 2 or 3 LOR with no additional allowed, we just picked from these 4 teachers within the limit but always include the last one who knows my D for the longest and can look at her from a different angle.</p>
<p>An admissions officer at UMass Amherst told us they are required to read every single thing that you send in with your application. (And asked nicely not to send in a lot of extra stuff.) That policy may differ from school to school. My son sent an extra rec to all of his schools because one of the schools he applied to required two and we could not figure out an easy way to just send one to the others through Naviance. They were from different core areas though.</p>
<p>If ds wants to send an extra LOR but the Comm App does not have a slot for the extra letter, what is the best way to “send” it? E-mailing it to the e-mail address of the general admission’s office or the admission counselor for our area?</p>
<p>^ If the CA does not have the option of extra LOR, it means the school does not want it.</p>
<p>^bill, is that true for the new CA? Because the old version didn’t have a place for supplemental LORs, they were sent by snail mail. Just wondering as that’s the way at least one school I know still wants them.</p>
<p>The new CA does allow schools to leave room for optional additional letters of rec, both in the category of teacher recs and “other” recs. Many have made provision for an extra rec in one category or the other. I haven’t seen schools that have space for an option rec in both categories, but probably there are a few.</p>
<p>I don’t agree that all schools which have not provided for these optional recs in the CA form itself this year do not want them. Our D specifically asked her admissions counselors this year at each school where there was no room to add an “other” in the CA form. All of them welcomed the submission by email without reservation. These are all small LACs. At larger institution it would probably be a different story.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info niceday! Trying to keep up with all the changes :).</p>
<p>niceday, thanks for sharing the information. Would you suggest such letter be e-mailed to the college admission general e-mail address or to the specific area admission counselor?</p>
<p>I’d suggest talking or emailing directly with a person in admissions to find out whether they want and will read the additional rec. Explain in as few words as possible why you believe the added rec is important to your app. (i.e., Most of my extracurriculars are unusual and outside of school.) An email to the admissions officer assigned to the applicant high school is ideal. If you don’t know that person’s name or email address, you can call the main admissions phone number and ask. Once you are advised the rec is welcome, say thanks and ask about delivery instructions.</p>
<p>
A few misconceptions here.</p>
<p>First off, teachers do write letters than slam the kid. A rec asks for their honest opinion, you better be sure its going to be positive! You need to ask all the people you approach for recs not just if they’ll write one, but if they would write a strong letter for you or if you should approach someone else. While it can be uncomfortable for a student to ask a direct question like this to a teacher, it HAS to be done. In “The Gatekeepers”, a book written after a NY Times reporter followed the admissions committee at Wesleyan for a year, is a real-world example of a bad rec. Obviously when the student asked for a rec she assumed it would be positive, but here is what she got:
This could have been avoided if the teacher had been asked if they would write a strong rec. The student did not get in. </p>
<p>Furthermore, your calculus of how letters combine is flawed. You seem to think that “maybe the 1st two letters aren’t so great, the 3rd will save the day”. If either of the 1st 2 letters are critical, odds are you are already sunk. Even if they are just lukewarm, that alone is a knock on the applicant. Colleges don’t know you and the circle of adults you have interacted with. They realize, though, that you have complete freedom to select the ones who think highest of you and bypass those that might have a less positive view. When they get a lukewarm letter (or, worse, a negative letter) they have to think to themselves “Out of all the people they could have chose, perhaps this is the BEST they could come up with.” A 3rd letter is not going to change this view.</p>
<p>Lastly, colleges make it clear that applicants should take up their time with a 3rd letter only if they believe it will provide something new. Post #8 gives an obvious example; the student got a letter from a teacher that supervised a big EC over a multiple-year period. It is reasonable to conclude this letter will give a different perspective than letters from her classroom teachers. Just getting another letter and hoping it adds something shows the adcoms you are unable to put yourself in the place of others that know you, unable to figure out what that 3rd recommender knows that the 1st 2 did not.</p>
<p>My third rec letter is from my employer who i worked for at a residental camp for 3 years and who has known me since I was 9. Does this make sense?</p>