College Admissions

Letters Of Recommendation – Guide To Ensuring That Yours Are Excellent

March 19, 2010 | Posted by Angela Arnold

College Admissions Officers review letters of recommendation carefully and what those letters contain will impact their decisions.

These letters must tell about you as a person, not just your performance as a student or athlete. They cannot be written by someone who is a casual acquaintance. A superficial, perfunctory or insincere letter will do more harm than good.

Your GPA, SAT scores and other test scores are impartial measures of your performance. The letters of recommendation you obtain help give the admissions reviewer a better picture of your character and your potential at their institution. The people who write these letters need to know you well enough to give the officials an idea of your intrinsic nature and values. If they have only known you a short time, even a glowing letter will not impress.

Yet, those who recommend you must also have recent, current knowledge of who you are and what you are doing. So, if all of your letters of recommendation come from teachers you had in ninth grade, then you might have a problem.

This is the plan of action I advise you to follow. Prepare a portfolio for each person who you are asking to write a letter. The portfolio needs to contain the information they need to conveniently submit their letter. A letter of request from you to them would be helpful.

Don’t call them on the phone or drop it in the mail. Meet them face to face and hand them the portfolio. This emphasizes how important it is to you, and they are more likely to take their letter seriously.

Reconnect with any potential letter writer that you have not been in contact with recently. Make sure they know what your current plans are and what you have been doing to achieve your goals. If you reach out to them, they are going to have a more favorable attitude toward you.

You need to be aware of how people perceive you in order to get the best letters of recommendation. Unfortunately, not everyone will view you favorably. As you ask people for recommendations, keep alert for any signs of reticence or discomfort. They may be signs that the person you are asking does not feel comfortable writing a letter for you. If they’re not comfortable with the request, the letter will probably not be flattering and you are better off without it. Don’t pressure them to write a letter of recommendation just so that you have another one. Hopefully their approach will be “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

That doesn’t always happen in real life. Since your recommendations are an extremely important component of the college admissions process, you have to be wise enough to only ask the people who know you and like you well enough to write a great letter of recommendation for you.

Angela Arnold, a college counselor who has helped many students get into college, has published 7 free videos about the college application process Grab your copies today.