Which Teachers Should Write Your Recommendations for College?

Many private colleges will ask you to submit at least one letter of recommendation from a teacher. Unfortunately, a lot of students pick those teachers for all the wrong reasons.

For example, here are three things colleges DON’T need your teacher to tell them:

1. The grade you earned in the class.

When you need a teacher’s letter of recommendation for college, it’s natural to run right to the teacher who gave you your best grades. But remember that colleges have your transcript. They don’t need a letter of recommendation to tell them you got an ʺA” in trigonometry. Yes, a letter can help a college learn about your level of achievement relative to the other students in that class. But if all your teacher can say is that you did well in the course, that’s not providing any new information.

2. The activities you’re involved in.

Don’t pick a teacher just because he or she works with you in an activity like the yearbook, student counsel, school newspaper, etc. You list those activities on your application, and you’ll probably write at least one college essay about an activity that’s been meaningful to you. So there’s no need for your teacher to elaborate on what you do outside of the classroom.

3. How well your teacher knows you.
Maybe your teacher knows your family, or coached your little league baseball team when you were 12, or hosted you at the dinner table regularly because you grew up hanging out with his kids. That’s all fine.mBut none of it needs to be explained in an academic letter of recommendation.

So, what’s left?

Colleges want to know your academic story behind your grade in the class. What are you like in the classroom? Do you ask questions? Do you contribute to class discussions? Do you seem genuinely interested in learning the material? Did you struggle in the class but work like crazy to improve your grade? Did you do an interesting project or complete outside reading on your own or stop by to talk about the material with your teacher after class?

That’s your academic story. It’s the information that tells colleges what you’re going to be like in their classrooms. And your teachers are the only ones who can share it.

When you choose your rec writers, pick teachers who can tell your academic story. Until then, your job is to give them a good story to tell.

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Content copyrighted as of 2015 by Collegewise LLC.

Collegewise (established 1999) is a private college counseling company that focuses on helping students find, apply to, and attend the right colleges! We’re the largest network of private college counselors in the country with 23 locations nationwide. Most of our counselors, including Rhiannon, have served as college admissions officers while others have come from a school counseling background.

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