How To Ask for a Letter of Recommendation? Here are 10 Things Every High Schooler Should Know
Letters of recommendation (LoRs) are a vital part of a strong college application, as they provide otherwise unmentioned information about a student from a third party. While essays and extracurriculars can indirectly show colleges a student’s priorities, personal traits, and areas of strength, they’re written by the individual most invested in presenting themselves as an ideal candidate!
While teachers typically only agree to write LoRs for students for whom they can provide positive commentary, there will always be variation, even between the students they consider the most talented. This also doesn’t guarantee that students won’t receive an underwhelming letter; while they may consider someone intelligent or motivated, they might not have much more to say beyond emphasizing strong grades or consistent performance. Unfortunately, bland letters can have a negative impact. Highly detailed and complimentary content is essential for an LoR to truly add value to a student’s application.
Despite the value LoRs can lend (or take away from) students’ applications, their importance is often overlooked. As students aren’t the ones writing the letter, they often feel that once a teacher agrees to support them, there’s nothing left to do. However, you can still work to ensure it adds a valuable boost to your application materials!
In this article, we’ll review 6 of the most important things to keep in mind when you request letters of recommendation!
1. Ensure balance between academic disciplines
An often-unspoken rule in admissions is that students should not solely seek out recommendations from teachers in fields related to their intended college major. Even for schools that do not explicitly state this as a requirement or strongly recommended practice (read: almost mandatory), it’s very important to balance out who you ask for a letter. The general guide to follow is asking one STEM teacher and one humanities or social science teacher.
While it can be frustrating for students with significantly higher performance in one realm over the other, there’s unfortunately no escaping this requirement. While you’re in 11th grade, try to build relationships with teachers across disciplines to ensure you’ll have a solid choice in both areas of study. Even if the subject does not interest you, stay engaged in all courses you take, and make sure teachers are aware of your dedication through participating in class or going to office hours. This will pay off in the long run when it comes time to ask them to recommend you.
2. Provide supporting materials
A good recommendation must be detailed. A generalized or non-specific LoR is not going to do you any favors. While teachers with whom you have a close relationship or who you’ve known for years are very likely to write letters of this nature independently, it’s never guaranteed how much information they might include. And it’s quite likely to receive overly broad letters from teachers who may not know you as well, taught courses with limited opportunities for in-class participation, or are newer teachers who lack experience in writing recommendations.
However, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to avoid this possibility. By providing recommenders with additional information in a brag sheet or cover letter, you can respectfully request that certain ideal information be included and ensure that you receive an effective and informative recommendation. Note that these materials must only be provided once they agree to write a letter for you; otherwise, you may seem a bit presumptuous.
When you’re preparing your supporting materials, make them targeted towards the context in which the teacher knows you. You should provide examples of academic strengths you’ve demonstrated, anecdotes about particularly effective projects or classroom contributions, and details that show a strong personal character, such as staying after class to help out students who were struggling. If relevant, asking them to mention the time you’ve spent speaking with them outside of class to gain insight into course material or additional resources to explore is a good idea. It’s great to have colleges see that you’re a dedicated student.
In terms of things to avoid, do not ask them to write about things you’ve done outside of class, unrelated to their subject area, unless absolutely necessary. If your math teacher was also the advisor for a math club you were highly involved in, requesting examples of your academic or leadership skills in the club is a great idea. On the other hand, showing your English teacher an engineering project you worked on isn’t worth it!
3. Remember your school counselor
School counselors are typically required to write LoRs for students’ college applications. However, just because you don’t need their approval to recommend you doesn’t mean it’s not worth speaking with your counselor about the letter or building a relationship with them.
Remember that, even for students at smaller schools, counselors will write many LoRs. This means that their letters are typically more generalized, usually containing mostly high-level information about the school itself, such as the program of study, overall student performance, and helpful context to frame every student’s application.
Nonetheless, there will still be information tailored to each student. Since counselors must write recommendations for all students at the school, colleges place lower value on these recommendations since they know that counselors can't be familiar with every student. But this also means that having an extra-strong letter from your counselor can make you stand out.
To gain an impressive counselor LoR, the first and most essential step is to get to know them. Stopping by their office in 11th grade to introduce yourself is a great way to start things off. Then, towards the end of junior year and the beginning of senior year, spend some time chatting with them semi-regularly, asking questions about the application process, seeking advice on future plans, and generally showing your academic motivation.
In these conversations, you can share information about yourself, indicating areas of interest, extracurricular involvement, or achievements you’ve gained throughout high school. This makes it much more likely that you will gain a detailed recommendation letter, as they’ll have more context on your profile to draw from than they will for most other students. It also increases the odds of positive comments on your personality and character.
4. Don’t ask more teachers than you need
The process of asking for recommendations is admittedly quite stressful. Students often wonder: What if I’m not asking the right teachers? What if a teacher declines? While these concerns are understandable, this doesn’t mean you should go too far when asking for recommendations. First, teachers can have limited ability in how many students they can recommend, so if you have more teachers agreeing to write an LoR for you than necessary, they might be forced to decline requests from other students. Don’t send other equally-stressed students scrambling to find backup choices!
Additionally, this risks harming your relationship with teachers with whom you hold a positive relationship. Even if they don’t write a letter for you, you don’t want to send the message that you do not value their support. Finally, asking two teachers in the same discipline means that they may become aware that you’re over-asking. If they’ve already agreed and potentially begun drafting their letter, they may find your behavior disrespectful, which could lead to a less flattering assessment of your personal character.
5. (Carefully) consider supplementary recommendations
The majority of schools will also accept supplementary letters beyond the three required. While permitted, it doesn’t mean it’s always worth taking advantage of. The first essential rule is never to ask for an additional teacher recommendation. Colleges only ask for two for a reason. The general guideline is to ask yourself—would this recommendation provide important context that would be truly unique from anything a teacher could write? If so, it may be worth pursuing.
Before requesting an extra LoR, you must be confident that this will be very impressive or valuable information. Think about it from the perspective of an admissions officer—imagine you had to read hundreds of applications each day and open a file with one or two extra pages to read. You’d likely think: I hope the extra time I spend reading this is worth it!
Some supplementary recommenders who can provide a positive impact include research mentors, advanced music instructors, and non-profit or volunteering organization leaders. This must be accompanied by both strong achievement in the field and familiarity with the recommender. If you’re asking a research mentor, you should have completed an impressive and high-impact project; if you ask a music teacher, you should be performing at a high level. If you decide to ask for a supplementary letter, it’s extra important to ensure that you discuss plans for the letter and provide highly detailed content for them to include.
6. Never ask to view the letter
On occasion, recommenders may ask if you would like to review their recommendation, and in some cases may even ask if you would like to contribute to writing the letter. This is especially common if you get a recommendation from a professor or researcher you’ve worked with, as this is a more common practice in job or academia recommendations. And if you personally ask to review or contribute to the LoR, some recommenders may withdraw their decision to recommend you or be less complimentary of your personal character.
While it is incredibly tempting to see what has been written about you and/or ensure that you think the content is strong enough, reading your letter of recommendation is both unethical and likely to harm your odds of admission. When you fill out your applications to colleges or summer programs, you’ll be asked whether you intend to waive your FERPA rights, which means you’re waiving your ability to view your recommendation letters.
It is strongly advised that you waive this right, as declining to do so implies that you’ve read the LoR and may have contributed to the writing of the letter itself. Colleges are often wary of students who decline to waive their rights, as it places doubt on the level of accuracy or objectivity of the letter. And since nearly all students waive their FERPA rights, your application will stand out.
Of course, colleges have no way of confirming whether or not you’ve read the letter, even if you’ve waived your FERPA rights, but doing so would be deeply unethical. You would likely have any acceptances rescinded should schools find out that you lied. So trust your recommenders to make the best possible case for your admission. If you’ve followed the steps in our guide, they should have all the information they need to write a strong recommendation.
If you’d like to participate in a rigorous research program open to high schoolers, you may want to consider the Lumiere Research Scholar Program, a selective online high school program for students founded by researchers at Harvard and Oxford. Last year, we had over 4000 students apply for 500 spots in the program! You can find the application form here.
Also check out the Lumiere Research Inclusion Foundation, a non-profit research program for talented, low-income students. Last year, we had 150 students on full need-based financial aid!
Alexej is a graduate of Princeton University, where he studied Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Humanities & Sciences. Alexej works in college admissions consulting and is passionate about pursuing research at the intersection of humanities, linguistics, and psychology.