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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Thu Aug 23rd, 2007 05:10 pm |
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In my blog today, I have links to a Newsweek article and online chat done by Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at Pomona. Poch had some excellent advice about the importance of letting your personality shine through in your applications. My son got a huge laugh out of the kid who, when asked in an essay prompt to write a question and then answer it, wrote "Do you play the tuba? No."
Here's the link to the blog, which links to both the article and the online chat:
The secret to college admissions
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Wendy (wjb)
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Posted: Thu Aug 23rd, 2007 08:27 pm |
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Thanks for this info, Carolyn.
Dean Poch made several comments about including the “right” information in recommendations:
“If recommendors know of your commitments and also comment on the depth of those interests, it really does become more convincing to a perhaps skeptical application reader.”
“Choose teachers to write references who know you well and can speak to your role in a class and with peers, not just that you got a good grade.”
This raises a question: How does one tactfully convey to a teacher that these are important issues? It seems unwise and overly intrusive for a student -- or parent -- to try to tell a teacher what he or she ought to be including in a recommendation. But teachers, even seasoned teachers, are not in the college admissions business, and they aren’t going to know intuitively what colleges want to know. Is it best left to the GC to give teachers guidance in preparing recommendations?
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leftcoast
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Posted: Thu Aug 23rd, 2007 11:34 pm |
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Wendy -- most students do provide teachers with a brief resume, listing their EC's etc. I think it would be fine to remind a teacher of a specific achievement or activity as well -- for example, my son's school had a community service requirement, and one of the math teachers regularly took groups of students to volunteer on Saturdays at a local homeless shelter; my son also tutored other students in math. He didn't ask that teacher for a college rec, but he had asked her for a rec for a summer program and I think it would have been fine to say something like, "I really want the colleges to know about the community service I did with you" as a way of encouraging the teacher to write about something more than math.
When my son did apply to colleges, one of the colleges on his list made clear that they were particularly looking for students who were independent and self-sufficient -- so my son gave his teachers a note that simply asked his teachers to comment on that quality as well as everything else. The same letters went to all colleges, even the ones that didn't care about that trait -- but of course that added fact simply made for a better letter all around. (My son is one of the most bullheaded and independent-minded people you will ever meet, so it wasn't hard at all for the teachers to comment on that personality trait)
I do think its helpful for the teachers to get a sense of what the students college goals are and what the colleges may be looking for, and in most cases the teachers actually know their students much better than the guidance counselor -- so if anything the teachers are the ones who can give the GC some guidance. One thing I really liked about my daughter's GC is that he made a practice of going to 3 teachers other than the ones writing the recs, and asking each to simply provide 3 adjectives they would use to describe my daughter -- then he incorporated that in his own letter. I remember words like "ambitious" and "assertive" -- which echoed comments that were made in the teacher letters. I think in my daughter's case, the rec letters were a big factor in her college admissions.
The problem with relying on the GC is that many of them are overworked, and all colleges are not looking for the same thing. I think that one reason that many students with excellent stats find themselves waitlisted or denied admission is that they have failed to distinguish themselves with their essays or recs -- they are excellent students but no sense of their personality or individual goals emerges from the package, so they simply don't attract the attention of ad coms reviewing their apps of thousands of other students with equally good stats.
If your kid has a strong personality and the type of goals that everyone knows in her school knows about -- you may not have to worry about "helping out" the teacher. They may already have very strong impressions formed about the student. For example -- there was a kid at my daughter's high school who had the starring role in every musical theater production put on from her freshman year onward. She had an amazing talent, and I'm sure that every teacher in the school knew it. Perhaps a kid like her would have to tell the teachers what not to write -- and choose some teachers who could comment on some other aspects of her personality to "round out" the application -- otherwise you could end up with 2 or 3 letters that say essentially the same thing. If the student in my example wants to major in musical theater -- it could be an advantage to have 3 teachers all writing about how amazing she is on stage -- but if her true dream is law school, then she might want to have at least one teacher write a rec focusing more on a different side of her. (My daughter is kind of like that -- a dance major at an arts high school who planned on pursuing an academic major in college, who ended up applying Univ. of Chicago as well as other demanding colleges.)
Last edited on Fri Aug 24th, 2007 05:28 am by leftcoast
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Thu Aug 23rd, 2007 11:42 pm |
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Wendy,
You're right - demanding that a teacher or GC write certain things in a recommendation is over-stepping the boundary. And, parents should NEVER be involved in the recommendation process, in my opinion.
However, students can certainly (politely) remind their teachers of certain projects/discussions/papers where their efforts stood out, and give them some insight into why they've chosen the colleges on their list and the types of things those colleges might be most interested in hearing about in general terms. Not "Make sure you tell Pomona how smart I am" but rather, "All of the colleges I'm applying to are small liberal arts colleges who seem to value classroom participation and intellectual creativity. Do you think you'll feel comfortable talking about me in those contexts?" (No 17 year old will actually talk like this, but you get the idea)
Giving the teachers and guidance counselor some information about your EC's can be helpful as well, but be careful - teacher recommendations should be more about who the student is inside the classroom than a list of EC's.
Finally, if you've chosen teachers who have seen you in action in the classroom, instead of teachers who just think of you as that lumpy kid in the back of the room who never joins in class discussion, then it's likely that your recommendations will help colleges get to know you well. If you've written essays that are true to who you are then it's less likely that there will be a disconnect between recommendations and your essays -- and really, that's what Poch was getting at: all parts of the application should resonnate with each other and build a 3-D picture of the student.
Does everything come together perfectly for most kids? Probably not. But, it is a good thing to keep in mind, not just when you're asking for recommendations but also when you're writing your essays. I tell kids not to start writing essays until they've looked at the recommendation forms and thought about what their teachers and guidance counselor might say about them. If they're planning on writing an essay that implies they are absolutely brilliant, they better make sure that their teachers won't write a recommendation saying they're a dull grade-grubber. And, this is where parents and other adults can do more harm than good in "Editing" student essays to the point where they don't sound like the kid, but like some imaginary kid the parent thinks the college wants. The best essays are ones that sound like the kid, warts and all. And, most 17-year old kids sound like -- well, like 17-year old kids.
Last edited on Thu Aug 23rd, 2007 11:44 pm by CarolynLawrence
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Aug 24th, 2007 12:15 am |
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leftcoast wrote: The problem with relying on the GC is that many of them are overworked, and all colleges are not looking for the same thing.
It's important to keep in mind that colleges are looking for different things from GC recommendations than they are from teacher recommendations.
The three main questions colleges want to know from the school report are pretty straightforward:
Academic achievement: How has the student done academically in relation to his/her peers and in the context of the high school? A GC doesn't have to personally know a kid to look at the transcript and see that they've taken a pretty tough schedule all four years, gotten great grades compared to most other kids, and managed to pass all of their courses.
Extracurriculars: How has the student contributed to the high school community and the larger community? Most high schools these days ask students to fill out a questionnaire with some of this information. Every GC I know encourages students to also give them a resume or a list of their EC's. A GC doesn't have to personally know a kid to pick up those activities in their recommendation, assuming of course that the kid has actually given them this information. 
Character: Is this applicant someone who will turn out to be an obnoxious trouble-maker? This is ultimately what "character" means to colleges -- they are looking at the GC recommendation for insights about which kids are the ones who will cause trouble, be disciplinary problems, be people their roommates can't stand, etc. A GC doesn' t have to personally know every kid in the high school to know which ones are the trouble makers, the ones constantly being called into counseling for causing trouble, etc. GC's have to be careful when alerting colleges to these kids, but they DO find ways to let colleges know that this is a kid they should be wary of, in one way or another (not just the written rec).
Colleges do recognize that *most* kids will talk to their GC's for five minutes a year -- if they're lucky. The Common Application and most School Report forms specifically ask GC's how long they've known the student and in what context. Colleges don't put the same weight on GC recommendations that they do on teacher recommendations for this reason. Is it a plus if your GC knows you really well? Of course. But will it keep you out if your GC doesn't know you from beans? Definitely not.
Now, teacher recommendations are a totally different story. Colleges are looking for a picture of who the kid is in the classroom - are they bright, curious, a grade grubber, a pain in the butt, talkative, witty, good writers, good at working independently, etc.
A recommendation from a guidance counselor who doesn't know you won't keep you out of any college in the country. (Of course, it's always nice if they DO know you, but colleges really do understand that most kids don't have that kind of relationship with their GC's). On the other hand, a recommendation from a teacher who sounds like they don't know you is a different story. It won't keep you out of college, but won't add much to your application either. It's just kind of a wash. But, a teacher recommendation that is totally negative -- well, all bets are off then.
Again, you can't control what your teachers may or may not say about you. You can only control WHO you ask to write your recommendations, remind them (if necessary) about your classroom accomplishments, and give them some help in understanding what the colleges on your list may be interested in knowing about you.
Last edited on Fri Aug 24th, 2007 12:22 am by CarolynLawrence
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