Guide to recommendations that impress top colleges
Letters of recommendation are of critical importance to your college application to a highly selective college because they:
provide the college with an additional perspective on who you are academically and personally,
demonstrate to the college that you have fans who know you well academically and personally and are your enthusiastic supporters, and
can sway an admission decision in your favor when you are juxtaposed against another applicant who is more or less equal to you in academic performance and activities.
A strong letter of recommendation should enthusiastically highlight an applicant’s intellectual capabilities, and present personal and direct insights into an applicant’s qualities from a third party perspective.
MIT says it succinctly why it considers letters of recommendations to be of material importance:
“Because of our highly competitive applicant pool, letters of recommendation hold substantial weight in our admissions decisions. A well-written letter for an outstanding applicant can show impressive characteristics beyond their own self-advocacy.”
With few exceptions, highly selective colleges require two to three letters of recommendation, typically from two high school academic subject teachers and a counselor.
What colleges look for in a letter of recommendation
Colleges want academic achievers who have demonstrated passion, innovation and leadership in an activity where they stand out above the crowd. Colleges view these characteristics as proxies for an applicant’s likely success in the post-college future. An enthusiastic and personalized letter of recommendation from a teacher who knows you well can reinforce to the college that you fit the profile of applicant that they want. The letter of recommendation should reinforce and expand on what you have presented about yourself in the application.
MIT is very direct about what it wants to see in a letter of recommendation :
“Both school counselor and teacher evaluations are most helpful when they are specific and storied. They should provide us with the information and impressions we cannot glean from the rest of the application. Try to give a complete sketch of the student and the context of their accomplishments. Support your conclusions with facts and anecdotes whenever possible.”
A strong letter of recommendation should address the following about you:
Intellectual capabilities
In addition to excellent grades, selective colleges want to know if an applicant is intellectually curious and is willing to go the extra mile to explore for answers and take risks to enhance their learning. Teachers are best positioned to observe if their students demonstrate these characteristics in a classroom environment and write about them in the letter of recommendation. The teacher/recommender can use anecdotes to powerfully illustrate these characteristics in an applicant and provide an additional valuable perspective about an applicant.
Personal qualities
Colleges value passion, leadership and resilience in applicants above all else. A recommender who can testify that an applicant possesses these characteristics through anecdotes and direct knowledge of an applicant’s activities and personal circumstances provides valuable insight to the college in evaluation of the applicant. These insights can be very up close and personal.
A recommender who testifies in the letter of recommendation about an applicant’s leadership in working to improve the nutrition value of a school lunch menu, or an applicant who organized a community wide effort to clean up the local park and make it safe for children and seniors to enjoy, reinforces to the college that the applicant is not only a leader, but also one who cares about the community and is motivated by kindness and empathy.
Descriptions of how an applicant managed a situation of extreme family hardship and still perform well academically demonstrate the qualities of resilience and character.
The recommender can also address other qualities that are memorable about an applicant including how they socialize and work with their peers, and how they tackle challenges when faced with them.
Community contributions
Colleges are very interested in how an applicant contributed to their community through their activities. Frequently descriptions of community contributions overlap with testimony about an applicant’s qualities and character.
Uniqueness
Most of all, colleges want to know how and why an applicant stands out from the crowd.
An applicant could be a world class athlete with a heavy competition schedule who still manages to turn in an excellent academic track record. An applicant may have consistently over several years volunteered as a ski instructor to a group of young children from low income families at a local ski resort, and in the process displayed an incredible level of dedication, patience and empathy in helping these children learn to ski and to love it.
Selecting the recommender
Because colleges are looking for current insights from teachers and counselors, applicants should carefully consider which of their teachers will be best positioned to write enthusiastic letters of recommendation on their behalf.
Ideally eleventh grade teachers are best positioned to write recommendation letters since their experience of the applicant would have been both recent and would have spanned a full academic year enabling them to provide in-depth and personal insight about the applicant that is relatively current. While it is acceptable to ask a senior year teacher to write a recommendation letter, that teacher’s exposure to the applicant would have been only a few short months prior to the submission of the application making it harder for the teacher to do justice to the letter of recommendation.
With this in mind, an applicant should be deliberate about developing strong relationships with their junior year teachers, with focus especially on their academic subject teachers whose classes they enjoy and are performing well in. A teacher appreciates students who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and who are willing to take intellectual risks, where appropriate. A student who works hard, and demonstrates enthusiasm in class will be noticed by the teacher, making it easier to develop a rapport and relationship with that teacher leading to a strong letter of recommendation.
Colleges want a diversity of perspectives on an applicant’s intellectual capabilities which means that an applicant should ask teachers from diverse subject groups to be their recommenders. Unless you intend to pursue a STEM major at MIT, and you need to emphasize your enthusiasm for STEM with recommendations from your Math and Science teachers, it is wiser to ask an English teacher and a Math, Science or Humanities teacher for recommendations to present a diversity of perspectives on your intellectual capabilities. For applicants who are clear about their major in college, they can also ask relevant subject teachers to write their recommendation letters for them.
If you are unsure if a teacher would be willing to write you an enthusiastic letter of recommendation, you can sound the teacher out by asking if he/she would be comfortable supporting your college application with a letter of recommendation. This type of question gives you a way to gauge the teacher’s willingness to write that all important letter for you.
Remember that a tepid or generic letter could harm your application, so it is very important to ask the right teachers to provide your letters of recommendation.
When is a good time to request for the letters of recommendation
A powerful recommendation letter is hard to write which means that the more lead time the recommender has to write the letter, the better the outcome for you. Most applicants ask their teachers for letters of recommendations in the Fall of senior year, just a few months before their college applications are due. If you want a thoughtful, well written letter, it is smart to get ahead of the crowd and make your request earlier.
While most high school juniors are not yet focused on the college application, it is the well prepared junior who requests teachers for letters of recommendation at the end of their junior year. At this time, the teacher’s recollections of you will be fresh making it much easier for the teacher to write an enthusiastic letter about you. The only drawback here is you probably have not finalized your college list, but you can always make the request with promise to come back with details about the colleges and their submission deadlines in the Fall.
You can also request for that letter of recommendation right at the beginning of senior year in late August or September ahead of everyone else.
An early request gives the teacher time to reflect on who you are and write a strong letter of recommendation for you.
What should an applicant provide to the recommender when making the request for a letter of recommendation
The recommender needs good reference points to write a letter of recommendation that demonstrates deep insight of the applicant and enthusiastic support for the applicant’s pursuit of college.
The request for a letter of recommendation to a teacher or counselor should always be accompanied by comprehensive information about the applicant’s academic performance, activities, achievements, passions and qualities, personal challenges and aspirations. This information will enable the recommender to write a strong letter of recommendation for you.
Letters of recommendations that are generic and vague without specific references to the applicant’s academic capabilities and personal qualities or letters of recommendation that only cite statistics about the applicant without personal insight do not support the application at all and could, in fact, negatively impact the application.
Here’s what you should include in the packet for your recommender:
List of colleges you are applying to, and their deadlines for submission of letters of recommendation. Include the method for submission of the recommendation letter
Your intended major (if you know it)
Your high school grades and GPA plus AP scores and standardized test scores, if available
Explain why you are asking the recommender for a letter of recommendation. For example, you found the recommender’s class inspiring, you did well in it and it greatly influenced your choice of major in college
Highlights of your achievements and interactions in the recommender’s class, and emphasize the qualities demonstrated that the recommender can testify to in the letter of recommendation. Give very specific examples: you can highlight that you were an active contributor in class discussions on several topics which you name and elaborate on, or you can highlight that you spent countless hours after class researching detailed elements of the chemistry project that helped your group win a statewide contest
Resume of activities and work experience, if any. It is useful for the recommender to have some context about you even if he/she will focus their recommendation on how they knew you as a student in their classroom. This is especially so if you had significant roles in clubs or non-school activities that demonstrate passion and leadership combined with an ability to manage time well.
Brag sheet - this is a personal statement and self evaluation for you to discuss your most positive qualities, skills and strengths. The brag sheet can draw from one or more areas of your life and experience including:
your passion and how you have pursued it - include what qualities this pursuit demonstrate about you
how you have evolved as a person through your experiences, and the lessons you have learnt from this evolution
your hobby(ies) and how it has influenced you and helped you grow and change
your family’s influence in your life, and the impact they have had on your personal development
a challenge or problem you had to face, how you dealt with it and what you learned from it
a person or experience that impacted you significantly, what you learned about yourself from this and how the person or experience changed you
what 3 words best describe who you are, explain why and give specific examples
In addition, you can also ask a parent to write a brag sheet about you and you can submit a draft copy of your college essay to your recommender. While these last two items are optional, you should submit them if you can as they will provide the recommender with a more complete picture of who you are.
Note that most high schools provide their seniors with letter of recommendation packets that must be submitted to the teachers and counselors who will write the letters of recommendation.
What makes for a great letter of recommendation
First and foremost, a great letter of recommendation must exude warmth and enthusiasm for the applicant. It must also show that the recommender knows the applicant well and has valuable insight into the applicant’s academic performance, qualities, aspirations and experiences. And finally, the letter of recommendation must cite specific examples that demonstrate the applicant’s qualities and character. Generic statements alone are insufficient and unhelpful.
We reproduce below a letter of recommendation letter shared by the MIT admissions committee as an excellent example of what is a great letter:
“It is a great pleasure for me to recommend David for admission to MIT. He is one of the most extraordinary students I have encountered in 20 years of teaching. I taught David A.P. Calculus last year as a tenth grader, and he was one of the very top students in an extremely able group of mostly seniors. He has a high aptitude for math and was very much involved in his work, applying himself with persistence and dedication and often going beyond the regular class assignments.
David’s abiding interest, however, is computer science. He has developed a series of “strands” for use in providing computerized drill and review in the basic skills and techniques of algebra and arithmetic and has recently adapted these to other subjects. David’s work in this area has been so original and significant that he has published a paper on it and delivered several lectures to professionals in other parts of the country. This is a phenomenal accomplishment for anyone, especially a young man in rural Arkansas. It is also worth noting that both last year and this year David taught computer programming to a tenth-grade class of mine for two weeks. He took over completely, preparing lectures, assignments, and tests with great care and thought. His lectures were clear and well organized, and it was obvious that he had expended a great deal of effort to make the course the success that it was.
David’s personal qualities are as impressive as his intellectual accomplishments. An extremely kind, sensitive and sensible boy, he has had a difficult family situation for a few years now. He provides emotional support to his mother through her battle with cancer without allowing the situation to undermine his own stability and accomplishments. He has exhausted all that we have to offer him in this small community, and the maturity that he has demonstrated leads me to believe him capable of entering college a year early, as he now plans to do. I sincerely hope that you will be able to offer him a place in MIT’s freshman class.”
Here’s what the MIT Admissions Committee had to say about the letter:
“Excellent! This recommendation is filled with comments from someone who clearly knows this student well. We get a clear sense for not only David’s intellectual capacities, but also emotional maturity. His genuine love for computer programming comes through in this teacher’s description. We also realize that he is pushing academic boundaries in his community and making opportunities for himself – a trait that is especially important for a candidate seeking college admissions a year early.”
We also share below an unhelpful generic letter of recommendation released by MIT:
“Jen was a student in one of my predominately senior physics classes. She took physics her junior year in high school and was a good student. Through hard work, she was able to develop a good understanding of the subject material.
Jen also had personal qualities that are commendable. In the two years that I have known her I have never known her to be dishonest or untrustworthy. Once on an exam paper I had made a grading error in her favor. She brought this to my attention even though it resulted in a lower test grade.
In conclusion, I feel that Jen has both the academic and personal qualities to be a credit to the college of her choice, and I give her my recommendation without reservation.”
Here’s what the MIT Admissions Committee had to say about the letter:
“We receive thousands of recommendations like this each year. It is all positive, but it doesn’t give any real depth to the candidate. In this instance, the reader is left feeling the writer is reaching for something to say. Honesty and trustworthiness are certainly admirable traits, but they are not uncommon among the nation’s top college applicants. We are looking for a compelling reason to admit someone, so information on the class material does not help the candidate. Although Jen may be a hard worker, most of our applicants are. Although the comments are positive, it is difficult to grasp onto anything tangible to make this candidate’s case stronger. Was this faint praise intentional? How does Jen fare in comparison with other (more outstanding?) candidates at the school?”
You can read more examples of letters of recommendation, both great ones and unhelpful ones, to MIT HERE. These examples should give applicants and their recommenders a very good idea of what will be valuable in support of an applicant’s application to a highly selective college, and what may actually detract from an application and harm the applicant’s chances.
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