Letters of Recommendation

documents being exchanged

Letters of recommendation can reinforce your academic transcript by highlighting your skills in specific subject areas. Or they can add information about your character, such as how you may have helped other students during a class, or share a time when you reached out to get help or learn more about a subject, Patricia Peek, Ph.D., dean of undergraduate admission, explains.

Your Letters of Recommendation

Many schools may require or recommend a counselor letter as a part of your application. Many also allow you to submit letters of recommendation from teachers, coaches, club advisers, and others. Recommendation letters help give admission counselors a more complete picture of who you are, how you collaborate with others, and what you can bring to the school.

Some high school students work closely with their guidance counselors and develop a strong relationship that can lead to a good recommendation letter. Others, however, have guidance counselors who have to work with many students and don’t have the time to form strong bonds with all of them. That’s where the other recommendation letters can fill in the gaps, Dean Peek says.

“The letters of recommendation give us different elements of who you are that either reinforce or send us something we wouldn't get from the transcript,” Dean Peek says.

Here are some tips to keep in mind as you think about your recommendation letters:

  • See them as an opportunity. If the school you’re applying to allows for more than one letter, take advantage of the chance to add to your application. Think about including letters that feature something the admission counselors won’t learn about you anywhere else in your application.
  • Choose someone who can add value to your application. If you work closely with a faculty member on a project, they might be able to speak to your academic, social, leadership, and communication skills. If you spent four years involved in an extracurricular activity, that coach or adviser might be able to show who you are outside of the classroom and how you’ve been a positive influence.
  • Be respectful of your letter writers’ time. The more time you give someone to write a recommendation letter for you, the better that letter will be. “Before you leave for the summer between your junior and senior year—that's the time to ask your faculty members for their recommendation letters,” Dean Peek says. “Because, invariably, the most popular faculty members are getting a lot of people asking them.”