Long Story Short: Last year, one of my teachers (for an AP Course no less) outright quit at winter break. For second semester, I ended up teaching one of the two class periods with lectures and by writing worksheets / practice tests. When we finally got a new teacher, there were only about 5 weeks before the AP Exam. Of the ~20 students who took the AP Exam, we averaged about a 4. My counselor will be mentioning this in her recommendation. Two questions:
(1) The replacement teacher wants to write a recommendation letter for me; however, I already have my core teachers and additional recommendations lined up. As such, the teacher intends to mail a letter labeled “Unsolicited” (i.e. I did not request him to send it) to the admissions offices of several of the colleges to which I am applying. Should I tell the teacher not to mail this letter?
(2) I am planning to use this experience to respond to the forth CommonApp prompt (Describe a problem you’ve solved…). Would this be a good thing to write about?
- Some schools just don't want another rec so even if it's amazing, they might not even look at it.
- Great thing to write about, don't know how you managed to pull that off. It's incredible.
This is just a thought – But I was thinking of using the CommonApp “Additional Info” section to provide a link to a Google Doc (or something similar) with some of the worksheets / tests I made. Thoughts on this? While I am afraid it might be a bit excessive, several of the documents I made were very good.
It is a good thing to write about but I don’t think the school admissions officers want to look at your worksheets/tests. It is generally OK to have one additional recommendation if the person can talk about an aspect that won’t be covered in your normal teacher recommendations. I believe you can put it through the common application system or let the teacher send it on his/her own as discussed in your post.