<p>me: give you write me an recommendation letter?
guidance: but i don’t know you well enough
me: (give her the you can’t be serious look) what if i tell you more about myself
guidance: oh golly</p>
<p>(i had to leave cuz i’m having a tryout for basketball)</p>
<p>me: we’ll see. we’ll talk some other time. See ya.
guidance: bye</p>
<p>what exactly does a guidance counselor needs to write in her letter of recommendation? I’m international so its not customary for counselors to be really familiar with their students. i’m thinking maybe to get her to repeat my ECs. i’m not sure if that’s a good idea.</p>
<p>Unless a student makes a real effort to get to know his/her counselor, chances are the recommendation written is going to be generic. If you are required to have a recommendation from your counselor for your application then you should probably just give him/her a list of your activities. Your counselor can then write about you based on your grades and involvement. (“Hard worker,” “Caring individual”…stuff like that) It probably won’t be brilliant or anything…but most probably aren’t…</p>
<p>I have had the privilege to know Mr. A for the past four years. He is one of the best students I have ever had in my 20 year career at B High School. I have grown to intimately know him through his involvements with Sport Team C, Student Government, Club D. However, his leadership abilities and dedication to academics alone would not be enough to describe Mr. A. He has a vibrant personality that makes him likable to all those that know him, blah, blah, blah. </p>
<p>As you can see. You really don’t want a rec just talking about your activities and grades. You actually want it to be on how your counselor sees you as a person, leader, and a student. Your recommendation is a way for adcoms to go beyond the facts already written on your application. They want the intangibles.</p>
<p>great advices guys. Well here’s a little more info, my teachers’ recommendations are great and they are about how they see me as a person/leader/student…</p>
<p>at my school (Canadian), we only go to the guidance if we want to have our courses changed. Other than that, we don’t receive any guidance- we don’t even get advices on what courses to pick.
But fortunately, my counselor is really responsible and caring. I don’t want to come off as too pushy so how should i approach her about the situation in the next couple of days. I’m applying Cornell ED (OMG) so time is against me.</p>
<p>I’m hoping she didn’t really say “oh golly” :P</p>
<p>Here, our guidance counselors have every students’ parents fill out a sheet on their personal qualities or any troubles they have had to overcome, and have the student fill out stuff on his/her own passions as well.</p>
<p>You could maybe give her a sheet like this.</p>
<p>Our GCs also send out parental (as well as student) forms like peachpuff’s. We also send in a transcript of sorts of our ECs, awards, volunteering activities, and summer activities.</p>
<p>^ that’s actually what she said. lol mmmm, she does like to kid around with me so i don’t know. And i guess i chose a bad time to ask her, the day before the Canadian Thanksgiving so i guess she didn’t want to be stressing about a rec letter during thanksgiving. </p>
<p>How should i begin our conversation and get to the issue about the rec letter? Should i just be straightforward?</p>
<p>aeroengineer-our GCs don’t do anything so i really have to be proactive and persuasive. You won’t believe how lazy our GCs are. They took like 3 weeks to process everyone’s demand to switch courses at the beginning of the year. Mine is the best of the 4 so that’s good. But she’s also the most busiest since everyone goes to her. But they only want to know like what Canadian univs they need to apply so they are easy to deal with. Me, on the other hand, she’s just like "Oh golly’ lmao</p>
<p>Yeah lol, I meant that you should prepare something like that for her to make her job a little easier. Usually, you don’t want to wait until holiday to give them stuff; it makes them more stressed which might lead to worse recommendations =/.</p>