Starting college applications ... argh ... examples of recommendation letters?

[saw]

After going back and forth on this for some time, DD has decided that she will apply to college for next year. (She's just turned 16, was skipped two years in elementary school, and is currently doing a gap year in China -- so she could in theory wait one more year and then be "caught up" to her classmates chronologically). Because she's in China and because she decided just recently to do this and because of a whole heck of a lot of carp that's been going on in our family life, we're already behind, yay. I will do the legwork and help her out in anything she cannot do herself because of being in China, although obviously she needs to be in charge of the process.

 

So my second question of the year (first was paper app for SATs, which got sorted, thank you all) is where to find examples of teacher recommendations? Her recommenders are not going to be US people. Most likely will be recommendations from the Netherlands, France and the UK, where letters of recommendation for college are just not as common as in the US. I asked one of the admissions offices last spring and was told the recommenders may submit in their native tongue with a translation, which is great news, but I'm hoping I can find some examples to send the teachers so that they know what sort of thing is usual? Any suggestions?

 

I'll be back I'm sure. Many thanks in advance.

[Kareni]

I recall that Kathy in Richmond has recommended this article from the MIT site:

Writing Recommendations

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Laura Corin]

Most likely will be recommendations from the Netherlands, France and the UK, where letters of recommendation for college are just not as common as in the US. 

 

Letters of recommendation for college are part of the UK's UCAS common application procedure, so they are not a separate thing, but they definitely exist.  They are called references - there is a video on this page about them.  So you would probably need to ask a UK person for a 'reference' for university.

 

L

[raptor_dad]

I agree with Laura, if the recommendations are coming from Europe you should be fine; standards are similar to American norms. Strong recs from France which is notoriously strict might even be a plus...

 

However, if you are getting recommendations from China, the standards are different. Chinese, and perhaps other asian recs(???), tend to be multiple pages and very effusive. American reviewers have trouble evaluating these uniformly positive, lengthy reviews. As a result, they tend to highly discount them absent other credible outside credentials.