“Honestly, if you want to be X major and claim and reclaim it, you really ought to have a letter from a teacher in that. Not 9th or 10th grade, but recent. AP level, if possible, assuming a related course is offered (preferably a core.) If you don’t, what’s a reader supposed to think? That you didn’t understand? Oops. That you thought the teacher doesn’t like you? Oops.”
Now, see, this makes me nervous. We’re still not sure which way S19 is leaning in his college search, but we will be exploring some STEM/possible engineering options. He has straight As in his AP calc class, but can’t get a recommendation because his friend asked the teacher back in January, and it started a stampede of kids to get to her. So, by the time S went to ask her a few days later, she said she was at limit and could not write any more recommendations. So he will have to go to his 10th grade pre-calc teacher - a class in which he had some low test grades. I wonder, do AOs ever think of this kind of thing? It’s not that he has a bad relationship with a teacher - she would have been his first choice, but he got shut out by the maneuverings of another highly competitive kid, and he refuses to harass the teacher into making an exception for him.