<p>My D school requires parents to write a recommendation (one paragraph) on what we think about our kid. This is part of the Student Profile that seniors need to submit to school GC for requesting teacher references.
Academic and leadership achievements are separate (to be filled up by the student).</p>
<p>Anyone has suggestions on what to write.</p>
<p>All I can only think of …
We love her and think very highly of her.
She is a caring individual.
She is a responsible person; we have two dogs that she had been taking care of them since she was 8 yrs old.
She helps around the house.
She is our dependable baby-sitter for her brother.
She brighten the house_she is very musical
She has a remarkable ability to take good and bad equally.
She never dwell on things-no postmortem on test that she had done badly etc.</p>
<p>Those things sound good. They need to hear the stuff that only you would know. They see your D as a student, but who knows her better as a PERSON than you? </p>
<p>We wrote a parent recommendation for S to Union College (Union actually has a form for this, it’s optional, but they said you know your kid better than anyone!) </p>
<p>So write that she’s caring, responsible, dependable, musical, even-tempered, and doesn’t obsess over things that don’t go well. Write that she’s a great older sister. Write that she’s kind and empathetic to others. It’s only one paragraph, sounds like you have plenty of material listed.</p>
<p>I struggled over this with my first born. It was difficult to not say what was, in my opinion, his greatest characteristics- that he is a loving, kind, considerate person. It sounded so hackneyed. With my youngest, I talked about his ability to get work done in a seemingly effortless way, how he grabs minutes throughout the day (getting up a half hour early sometimes to catch up on reading; grabbing 15 minutes in between 7th period and baseball practice, etc.) so that it’s not obvious when or how he gets everything done. </p>
<p>Also I talked about how it made me feel to watch him pitch and how part of me aches that he won’t pursue baseball further even though every high school coach he had tried to get him to go D1. And all the emotions that ran through me when he pitched- anguish, joy, fear. I’m not sure that was very helpful for college purposes but I got fed up with trying to “say the right thing” and just wrote from the heart.</p>
<p>On our “brag sheet” we wrote about all the obstacles she had to overcome–ADHD/LD and chronic illness–to do well academically, so the counselor would appreciate the content of her character. But, we didn’t want these things mentioned in the counselor recommendation, and provided instructions to that effect.</p>
<p>Back up what you say with a detail or example – a particular time she did such and such or a particular time she was good to her brother or grandmother. As in all writing, specific details are more memorable than generalities.
I wondered if GCs don’t just cut and paste portions of these answers to put in their own reports. I am feeling very cynical about GCs right now because my daughter put in a request to meet with hers over ten days ago and hasn’t heard back (should only take 2-3 days; daughter will put in another request, but still. It’s not even peak rec season yet!)
I had to really encourage my daughter not to be overly self-deprecating on her own portion of this sheet. I would say this to parents as well. This is your chance to help your child shine! Just back up what you say with details or anecdotes.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences.
Our D’s form was due this morning, it had about 15 pages to fill out.
We spent several hours writing our portion, however, at the end my D decided what we should include in our section too.</p>
<p>I was a college counselor for many years in an indpendent school. I always asked parents to write me a letter. I had three purposes for my request. The first was simply to elicit information that I might not have known (since my case load was 50 students, this was unlikely, but sometimes it happened). The second was to provide a variety of vocabulary. I think we all tend to use many of the same words repeatedly, and to hear different words was very helpful (esp. for that question asking for “the first three adjectives that come to mind” when describing a student. I wonder if it is still there). The third purpose was one that I discovered by accident. Often, the college process is fraught with all kinds of family complications, tension, stress. I found that in writing these letters, many parents rememebered wonderful things about their children, their lives together, and why they loved them. It was quite moving at times. The very best kind of information you can provide is anecdotal–telling a little story that illustrates what is important and defining about your child.</p>