Sort of dumb rec question...

gg0624
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:07:25 +0000

I’m starting to line up teachers for potential recommendations, and I have two in mind that I’m positive would give me great recommendations. However, my top choice school (Wesleyan) suggests a rec from a science/math teacher and one from a humanities teacher, which presents me with this dilemma: as a humanities kid through-and-through, my absolute best recs will come from my freshman English teacher (whom I still see regularly for literary magazine meetings) and my current APUSH teacher.

To calm my nerves, I’m going to ask my sophomore chem teacher for a recommendation, since he’s the only science teacher I ever had any sort of relationship with. But I’d like to submit all three recs, because the prior two would really speak the most about my character and my work ethic. My question is, then, would the top LAC’s and small universities (Wesleyan, Vassar, Haverford, Tufts, Brandeis) take the time to read 3 recs? Or would adding the third one be overkill? I want to make sure I have all my bases covered, but I don’t want to send in a weaker rec in place of a strong one simply to fulfill a “suggestion” from a particular school…although Wesleyan’s “suggestion” appears to be more along the lines of a requirement for admission. :-(