Who submits the optional rec ?

Colleges & Universities Princeton University
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<p>Well, as the title says: Who submits the optional (third) recommendation ?</p>

<p>Currently, I am a bit unsure whether or not I should ask someone. I certainly could, but I guess the recommendations of my parents or friends would be pretty useless and my tennis coach’s rec would probably be not as positive as my other recs. </p>

<p>Not that it would be bad - but it would not be extremely positive I think either. We always had an ambigeous relation. Another thing is that he does not know me that well.</p>

<p>Same thing with my guitar teacher.</p>

<p>However, I don’t want to transfer the idea, that the only thing in my life is school and that nobody wants to write me a rec aside from my teachers. </p>

<p>Any recommendations ? ;)</p>

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<p>What about an employer?</p>

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<p>We think that the optional rec was the tipping factor in our son’s case. It brought out his human side that the ‘professional’ recs missed.</p>

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<p>@ WhatsYourMajor:
Doesn’t exist. :/</p>

<p>@simba: That’s exactly what I thought and what my intention is. Who wrote it in your son’s case ?</p>

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<p>Father of his friend since 1st grade.</p>

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<p>“We think that the optional rec was the tipping factor in our son’s case. It brought out his human side that the ‘professional’ recs missed.”</p>

<p>That’s exactly what I did/am doing. Getting a really close “coworker” at one of the places I volunteer at – we’re really good friends and she always has optimistic things to say about me. She’s in her late 20s and I think she’d write a great application that would stress my personal qualities as only one of my teacher recommendations will allude to non-academic issues.</p>

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<p>I was going to do the optional rec (tennis coach) but with GC decided against it for a number of reasons, including the fact that my teachers doing the recs know me very, very well as a person, not just a student, and that I will definitely could not play varsity tennis at Pton. Just putting my two cents in there–that sometimes the optional rec will not add anything add’l but only repeat stuff from your teacher recs.</p>

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<p>Hey, I’ve known this professor at my local university for about 4 months. Is it worthwhile to ask him to write me a letter of reference? He knows me pretty well, I think…</p>

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<p>Four months seems rather short…it all depends on the degree of familiarity though and whether he/she will just write a generic “This is a very hardworking student.” rec.</p>

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<p>i imagine that lots of the teacher recs are filled with generic stuff like the above though.</p>

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<p>The beauty of optional recs is that the first and only criterion for selecting a recommender is whether they know you well and will bring a strong new perspective to your application. Whether that’s a professor, a teacher, an employer, or a coworker doesn’t matter. So nobody can tell you who should write you a rec because their background matters much less than how much they know you, and only you (and that person) know that.</p>