[Podcast] How Do I Ask A Teacher For a College Recommendation?

Sheila Akbar 0:00
A lot of the time they have to be careful with their own capacity, right? They can’t write a recommendation for every single kid in your class. I mean, maybe they could, they wouldn’t be that great, you know? So they have to be judicious about who they say yes to. And then in some cases, it ends up being like first come, first serve. Hey folks, welcome back. Today we’re talking about recommendations and specifically how to ask for one. We’re also getting into how do you build relationships with teachers? How do you even know what’s required from a school or what you can submit as a recommendation? How do you choose whom to ask for a recommendation? So this is a really juicy episode. Excited for you to take a listen.

McKenzie Carver 0:75
Today, the burning question is how do I ask a teacher for a recommendation letter for college?

Sheila Akbar 1:04
Oh, that’s a great question. And I’m glad people are asking that because a lot of times people are like — I’ve seen students do this — on the Common Application, or usually whatever application platform you’re using, you just put in the teacher’s contact information and the platform will send the request. And the worst thing a student can do is just do that without asking the teacher first. Students do that. I’ve seen it happen. I’m like, wow.

So yes, you do need to ask the teacher — in most cases, two teachers — for recommendations. I get that it’s the fall and this is the question on people’s minds. But for people who are not applying this year, we really recommend you do this at the end of junior year. Ask your junior year teachers for the recommendation because they’ve known you for a whole year, and those are advanced classes — the grades for those classes will show up on your transcript. So there’s a little bit more context that colleges get to have if those are the people you ask for recommendations. If you’re asking a senior year teacher, right now some kids have been in school for a week or two. And if this is the first time you’ve ever had that teacher, what do they even really know about you?

McKenzie Carver 2:26
Right.

Sheila Akbar 2:27
Even in the fall of senior year, you can ask your junior year teacher — but now they only have about 11 weeks before early deadlines. Whereas if you had asked them earlier in the summer or at the end of the school year, they have a little more time.

And this is a really unfair part of college applications — one of the many unfair parts — teachers are not paid for writing your recommendations. It’s just extra work they end up taking on. A lot of the time they have to be careful with their own capacity. They can’t write a recommendation for every single kid in your class. Maybe they could, but they wouldn’t be that great. So they have to be judicious about who they say yes to. And then in some cases it ends up being first come, first serve.

Now I’m not saying ask them in 10th grade. We need to make sure we’re asking the right teachers — teachers you do have a relationship with. But it’s just a piece of the puzzle to keep in mind. You want to give them time to write a great recommendation and make sure they still have space and capacity to write one for you.

So that’s a little bit about timing. But to get to your actual question — how do you ask? I always recommend doing it in person. At the end of the class period, going up to the teacher’s desk and saying something like: “I’m thinking about my college applications and I would really love if you wrote me a recommendation. Can we set up a time to talk about it?” They might have time right then, and you can just talk about it. But in case they don’t, you give them the option to meet during lunch, another period, or set up a phone call or Zoom.

This is something you should plan ahead of time. Really think about why you want this teacher to write your recommendation. You should be asking teachers not just because you got a good grade in their class, but because they kind of know you as a student and as a person. That doesn’t mean they have to be a mentor at a best-friend level — but they should know something about the kind of person you are. They should be able to speak to how you show up in the classroom, how you treat other people, how you participate in class discussions, how you are in the hallways, what you do in your free time, what you really care about.

So oftentimes the best teachers to write a recommendation might be someone who has taught you in a class but is also the advisor for a club you’re in. If that overlap exists for you, that could be a great choice.

You also want to think about what you would want them to say. You have no control over that — and you also have to waive your right to see their recommendations. The recommendation will go directly to the application platform, not through you. But by preparing what you think you would want them to say before you ask, that can be part of your request. And more often than not, it will somehow end up in the recommendation.

Here’s an example. If you can ask a teacher from your English class who was the first person you learned anything about Shakespeare from — and you thought you hated English, you thought poetry was a waste of time, and then this teacher showed you something about Shakespeare’s sonnets that made you think, “Oh, I’m not going to be a poet, but I can appreciate this. I realize there’s a lot more craft and skill that goes into poetry than I had assumed.” Maybe they changed your mind about poetry entirely.

If you can say that when you’re asking — for example: “Mr. Lindsay, I’m preparing my college applications. I would really love if you could write me a recommendation letter. I thought you’d be the right person to ask because I came into this class hating literature and poetry. But after that unit we did on Shakespeare, my mind has really changed, and I really owe that to you and the work we did in this class. I thought that would be a really meaningful quality to showcase in my application.” And now Mr. Lindsay is like, “You know what, you’re right. I remember the paper you wrote about this.”

And it’s not that you’re being manipulative — you’re being honest. Teachers, especially when they have to write multiple recommendations, can start sounding the same. So if you can remind them of a specific interaction or a specific unit, that’s helpful to them. Then they’re like, “Oh, now I know what to write about. I know what story to tell.” So that’s how you want to do it: prepare what you hope they’ll say, think of the stories, and mention that when you ask.

Most teachers nowadays will give you a questionnaire to fill out. Some of these are really long — I’ve seen them, they’re like 20 questions, asking about all your extracurriculars, what colleges you’re applying to, why you think they’d be a good recommender, what you learned in the class, and it just goes on and on.

I always tell students: they’re not here to judge the quality of your writing. That’s not what the questionnaire is about. It still means you should hand in something that’s somewhat polished — no typos, something you thought about when you responded. But that’s another place where you can get those little tidbits across that you hope they’ll share in their recommendation.

The timeline is usually: you ask, they say yes or no — hopefully yes — and then they’ll say, “I’m going to send you a questionnaire to fill out. Get it back to me by this date so I can write your recommendation.” Draft your responses, think about them, and think about them in the context of the other things you’re saying to the colleges. Because your transcript is your transcript, your activities are your activities — though you can order them a certain way and describe them to create a certain impression. You have the most control over what the essays say. You don’t have much control over what the teachers say, but you get to choose the teachers. So you’re not going to choose a teacher who you think dislikes you. You’re going to choose someone who knows you, likes you, and will write a positive recommendation.

And depending on how you ask and what you say in the questionnaire, you might be able to make sure certain qualities come across. If your personal statement is emphasizing your love of community and collaboration, you don’t necessarily need a teacher to explain that again — but they might be able to provide some evidence that that’s truly who you are, how you show up in the classroom, and what your impact on the school has been.

McKenzie Carver 10:29
Right.

Sheila Akbar 10:30
And one of our consultants, Holly, always says: you want these things to resonate, but not repeat. The admissions officer doesn’t want to read the same story about you in a recommendation, in your personal statement, in a supplemental essay, and then hear about it again in an interview. There’s such limited real estate here. You want to make sure you’re using it appropriately and not just repeating yourself. But at the same time, you are a whole person. These things should not conflict — they should make sense together and contribute to the picture you’re giving the college of who you are.

McKenzie Carver 11:12
That makes a lot of sense.

Sheila Akbar 11:13
I’m going to pause there. I just told you a lot of stuff, I’m sure.

McKenzie Carver 11:16
Well, I do have some follow-up questions.

Sheila Akbar 11:18
Yeah.

McKenzie Carver 11:18
Are there any cases where teachers will show students their letters of recommendation before submitting them — or even after?

Sheila Akbar 11:29
I’m sure there are edge cases where that happens. I think it’s very unlikely in the high school setting. I know when I was applying to grad school or applying for fellowships in grad school, that was more the case than not. In some cases, they were like, “Will you write it and then I’ll edit what you’re doing?”

McKenzie Carver 11:48
Yeah.

Sheila Akbar 11:49
But at the high school level, that’s really uncommon — mostly because of the competitive cultures that come up around college admissions. They don’t want students feeling left out or competing with each other. I can just imagine the scandals that would come out if somebody shared a recommendation with a group text. And then all the parents get upset, and the administration gets involved — it’s just a whole mess. So I really don’t think that’s going to happen.

That said, there are some situations. This happened to me in high school. My French teacher wrote me a very kind and positive recommendation, and she wanted to make sure she covered all the points I wanted her to cover. So she didn’t show me the recommendation — she said, “I wrote about this, this, and this. Is there anything I’m missing?”

McKenzie Carver 12:53
I see.

Sheila Akbar 12:53
And I was like — I was 17, I didn’t know anything about college admissions — and I said, “I think you got it. If you’re being honest, I think that’s it.” But I did show her my essay.

McKenzie Carver 13:04
Oh, okay.

Sheila Akbar 13:06
So she knew what I was saying. And some of your teachers may ask to see your essay or understand what colleges you’re applying to. It really depends on how much time they have. I went to a really small high school, and this French teacher probably had five recommendations to write. There are other schools where teachers are writing 20, 30, or more than 80 — I don’t know how they do it. Teachers are amazing.

I should also mention that a lot of high schools now have a really structured system for asking for recommendations. You tell your college counselor who you want to ask, and the college counselor actually makes the request. Part of it is a matching process to make sure one teacher isn’t overloaded, that they’re being fair to everybody. So they take it out of the student’s hands — the student might give three names, and the college counselor arranges everything behind the scenes.

McKenzie Carver 14:22
Interesting. I do remember we had a student last application season who had to work with a system like that to request her letters of recommendation. And I remember her being very upset when she wasn’t paired with the two recommenders she wanted — just taking more of what you can control out of the student’s hands.

Sheila Akbar 14:47
Yeah. At the same time, that’s an opportunity to talk directly to those teachers. If you are assigned a recommender that way, you can say, “Hey, can we talk? I’m excited that I’m getting a recommendation from you.” Even if you’re not, say you are. And then think deeply about what this person can share about you.

I’ll also say this — everybody worries about it. They’re like, “Oh, my teacher doesn’t write very well.” Maybe they’re asking their physics teacher and that person’s not a natural writer. Colleges don’t care. As long as that teacher can communicate about your character and how you are in the classroom, that’s all that matters. They’re not judging the quality of a teacher’s writing.

McKenzie Carver 15:39
Okay. Now, do colleges care what subject the teacher who is recommending you taught you? Should you have a math or science and a humanities teacher as your two recommenders?

Sheila Akbar 15:54
Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s really going to depend on the student, their strengths, and whether they know their intended major. There are some engineering schools that will specify they want a recommendation from your math, physics, or science teacher. But most schools don’t care. There is a middle group of schools that say the recommendation should come from a core class — not a random elective, but math, science, English, foreign language, history — as opposed to something like photography. But some colleges don’t even care about that.

You can also see that some colleges, while they want two teacher recommendations, will also accept what they call an outside recommendation or another recommender. That could be the advisor for a club — not necessarily a teacher — or the advisor for your church youth group, your karate instructor, or any adult who knows you in a way that can help fill out the picture of who you’ll be on campus. Not every college accepts those. And even when they do, you may not want to send one if your outside recommender is going to say the same thing as your teacher recommendations — that’s a waste of everybody’s time.

I’ll also say this because I hear this question a lot: “I did this research with a professor and they said they’d write me a recommendation,” or “My uncle knows a senator who said they’d write me a recommendation.” If that person doesn’t actually know you and isn’t going to add a meaningful dimension to your application, their reputation or celebrity does not matter. People are not getting starstruck by the name of whoever is writing the recommendation — they’re thinking about the content of it.

It might also be worthwhile talking about what the recommendation form actually looks like. When parents think about this, they think about letters of reference for a job. But that’s not how these work. On the Common App — and listeners can Google “Common App recommendation form” and you’ll get to a help page where you can see a PDF of these forms — I do recommend looking at them because they’re very interesting.

It starts with contextualizing information: how long have you known this student, in what capacity? But then there’s a grid section where there are 13 or 14 qualities and the recommender is asked to rate the student compared to other students they’ve seen in their career. Things like intellectual curiosity, disciplined habits, maturity, respect for teachers, motivation, quality of writing — a bunch of different categories. Let me pull it up so I’m not just going from memory.

McKenzie Carver 19:50
I had no idea they asked those kinds of scaling or ranking questions.

Sheila Akbar 19:58
So this is the PDF form — usually students will complete it digitally on the platform itself. The teacher details include things like subject area, and whether they’re a high school teacher or a university instructor. And then here’s the grid.

McKenzie Carver 20:16
Wow.

Sheila Akbar 20:17
Right. Academic achievement, intellectual promise, quality of writing. And then if they have no basis for rating something, there’s that option — but otherwise it’s: below average, average, above average, well above average, top 10%, top 5%, one of the top few encountered in my career.

McKenzie Carver 20:35
Wow.

Sheila Akbar 20:36
Right. And not everybody is going to have all their checkmarks on the right-hand side. I was able to get my application file from Harvard when — during the big Supreme Court case — they had to make a bunch of these files public. So they made them available for students who had been admitted. You have to go through a process to get them. And my recommenders had most marks in the top 5% and a couple in “one of the top few encountered in my career.” I think that had a lot more to do with my school than with me. But it’s really interesting to see.

These qualities are not primarily academic achievement related. I mean, there’s literally one that says academic achievement, but most of them are character related: discipline, habits, maturity, motivation, leadership, integrity, reaction to setbacks, concern for others, self-confidence, initiative. This is where colleges are getting a lot of information about the student. And then there’s “how long have you known them,” “what are the first words that come to mind,” and then an evaluation of a thousand words or less — essentially two pages — where they write an open letter. There’s a lot more that goes into it than just writing that letter.

McKenzie Carver 21:56
Right. And teachers need to know if you’re applying early action or early decision, so they know when the recommendation needs to be sent.

Sheila Akbar 22:08
Yeah.

McKenzie Carver 22:08
So they know when it needs to be submitted.

Sheila Akbar 22:11
Exactly. That’s an important thing to communicate when you’re asking. And I encourage students to follow up with teachers in the form of a thank you note — before you even know whether the recommendation has been submitted. You’ll know from your Common App platform whether it’s been submitted, or your college counselor may tell you through Naviance or whatever system they’re using. But handwrite a thank you note: “Thank you so much for writing my recommendation. I really appreciate it. You’ve been a meaningful mentor in my life.” You’ve done two things here: you’ve thanked them, which is important — but you’ve also put it back in their mind: “Oh right, I need to write a recommendation for that kid.”

McKenzie Carver 23:03
That’s really smart. Are there any times when a letter of recommendation is optional?

Sheila Akbar 23:12
Yeah, there are some schools that don’t require them. Some that won’t even accept them — the University of California system does not use recommendations, for example. And there are plenty of other schools that don’t request them, and some say they’re optional. So it’s another requirement you need to track for each of your schools.

I have a lot of students come in during the spring of junior year saying, “I’ve got five recommendations.” And I’m like, “Why did you ask for five?” And they’re like, “I just wanted as many as I could get.” And I say, “Well, you only need two. So how are you going to choose between them?” And then they realize they may have to go back to a teacher and tell them they don’t need the recommendation after all.

So before you start asking, make sure you know how many each school requires, and you know what you want each teacher to say, so you can ask and give them the materials they need to write the best recommendation they can.

McKenzie Carver 24:17
Yeah. This whole piece of the process is so fascinating.

Sheila Akbar 24:21
I know. There have been teacher strikes where they go on strike specifically from writing recommendations.

McKenzie Carver 24:32
Why?

Sheila Akbar 24:34
Well, the teachers are striking for whatever reason, negotiating something — but they realize this is something they’re not compensated for. And I just thought it was a brilliant strategy, because then the parents are like, “No, no, no, we need recommendations for college. You need to give these teachers what they want.” So it’s kind of a brilliant move. I’ll say, though, it put students in a very stressful situation — they were like, how do we explain there are no recommendations?

This brings us back to the point about timing. If your teachers are on strike, your window for asking might be different. I’ve also had a lot of students who ask at the end of junior year, and the teachers say, “You need to ask me again in August when the school year starts.” So you’ll have to ask again — because in the interest of equity, teachers are trying to give everyone a chance to ask in the same window so it’s not so much first come, first serve.

Oh — while we’re talking about equity, there have been studies showing that students at private schools tend to receive longer recommendations that are much more complementary than students at public schools, which is completely unfair. But I also understand it: some private schools may compensate their teachers for writing recommendations, or it’s part of the job expectation. They may provide better training for writing recommendations. And simply — there are fewer students. So teachers can write a little bit more. That’s an unfair advantage. I’m not saying you need to move to a private school to get a better recommendation. But if you are at a public school, you may need to self-advocate a little more to get the quality of recommendation you want.

McKenzie Carver 27:01
Yeah, that’s really unfair. But it all makes sense why it would be like that.

Sheila Akbar 27:06
I know. But this is the problem with systems — they make sense, so we accept them. And we need to change this. There are groups working to change it.

The thing we didn’t talk about is: what if you feel like you don’t have any teachers to ask? You’re going to have to ask somebody. So choose the best option available if recommendations are required. But if you’re a senior applying regular decision, you do have time to build some relationships. And if you’re younger than a senior — especially if you’re a junior right now — be intentional. I’m not saying fake it or suck up to a teacher just to get a good recommendation. But think about your core qualities and values, and how you demonstrate them at school, because people will take notice. Whether it’s in a classroom discussion, an interaction in the hallway a teacher might overhear, or something in the lunchroom.

Be the person you aspire to be. That’s my best advice in life. If you know you want to be a certain way, just start being that way. It won’t happen like a switch you can flip, but you can start making small choices to move closer to that aspiration. And you kind of have to know who you want to be before you can start doing that — so it starts with reflection. What are my values, and how would I demonstrate them?

You can also do a little bit of a charm offensive. If you’re struggling in a class, sometimes the best recommendations actually come from that — you’re struggling and you’re determined to pull your grade up. Involve your teacher in that plan. Ask: “What can I do to write better papers or prepare better for these tests?” Don’t just wait for them to tell you. Say: “These are the things I’m aware of that I could do better. I’m getting tutoring, I’m reading this book, I’m using this online resource to improve my understanding, I’m working with an executive function coach so I don’t forget when homework is due.” Put your teacher in a position of mentorship where they can actually help you figure out what will make you successful in their class. Teachers love that. It’s proactive.

And that story — of a student who was struggling, who really came to them for help, and then actually did the things they said they were going to do — that’s a great story.

McKenzie Carver 30:12
Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Sheila Akbar 30:13
Right. So it doesn’t have to be a teacher you have a perfect grade with — it just needs to be someone who has seen you grow. That’s really the best guideline.

That charm offensive could also look like this: if you’re in English or history class and you’re covering a unit you find genuinely interesting, share something with your teacher. A YouTube video, an article, a book recommendation — “Hey, we just finished that unit and I got really fascinated. I found this video and thought you might want to see it.” Little things like that. Not every day, not even every week — but every once in a while, showing your teacher that what they’re teaching you is having an impact. That’s one of the best ways to build a relationship and let it grow.

Even if it’s March of your junior year and you’re thinking, “Oh no, I’ve only got two months” — two months is plenty of time to let someone get to know you.

McKenzie Carver 31:29
It really is.