Two recommenders from same context?

[Bristayl]

DD is planning to apply to some tippy-top colleges this fall (along with some good in-state public colleges). The top schools all require two teacher recommendations. The best recommenders she will have are a university professor in whose lab she is doing biological research, and one of his PhD students with whom she is collaborating on a project. DD's project and the PhD student's project are separate, and the two recommenders could write from different perspectives. They are the two "teachers"  who know her best and have worked with her most closely. She did have the PhD student as a actual teacher for a biology lab she took as dual enrollment in 10th grade. But I was wondering if it would somehow raise a red flag to have both recommenders from the same lab, one of whom wasn't officially a "teacher" in that she has never taken an actual class from him.

The other possibilities are not nearly as good. There are three professors she had for dual enrollment in 10th grade that were small/honors classes, but she has not had contact with them since. Her dual enrollment classes this year are large lecture classes and she has not gotten to know the professors. She has been to office hours a few times for one of them, but there were always many other students waiting to talk to him so she wasn't able to "chat".

What do you all think?

[JanetC]

Make a table of all the schools and their recommendation requirements. See if the teachers are required to be from two different subjects or just recommended to be so. Also make sure there isn't a requirement that the recommendations come from people who have seen her in a classroom environment which is different from the lab.

If you go ahead with those two, beware coming off as a "one trick pony" as far as biology goes, and make sure your counselor letter talks about other things. 

[GoodGrief]

As JanetC said, the schools often have specific requirements/recommendations for recommenders.

Once the Common App opens, you will see that she can collect as many recs as she likes, but they have to be categorized (I cannot recall the specific terminology of the categories, but they are things like "teacher" or "religious leader".) The ones in the teacher category will have to put in information about their school, which can get a little tricky for those of us homeschooling, and I'm not sure that the PhD student would work for that if that person has not actually instructed her in a class. But you can read the descriptions for the categories when that time comes. Certainly the lab mentors will fit in there somewhere.

The schools vary in how many recs they allow in each category on the Common App and you cannot substitute one for the other in that format (though some schools might allow a different rec to be sent in separately, I suppose.)

I would try to have her get letters from a variety of people if at all possible when the time comes, then submit what makes sense and fits into the requirements for any given school. You are going to find that some definitely do want teacher representing more than one subject, so I would prepare for that. One of my daughters had recs from some of the online teachers and co-op teachers, and that really was fine (she had multiple acceptances to highly ranked schools, if that is the goal.)

[Bristayl]

Thanks. It does look like three of the colleges want the recommendations to come from two different subject areas, so we'll probably have to ask one of last year's professors. She will also have at least one "other" recommender who can talk about other aspects of her life.

We sat down and made a list of possible recommenders and will probably get letters from several so that we can make choices.

I'm already rethinking my upcoming 9th grader's DE possibilities so that he will have recommenders from more than one subject area in junior year!

[regentrude]

54 minutes ago, bctnln1059 said:

We sat down and made a list of possible recommenders and will probably get letters from several so that we can make choices.

That's not how it works - you don't get to collect letters and pick. Recommenders need to submit their letters directly to the college or the Common App.. Also, the student will have to waive his right to see the recommendation; otherwise, most professors will decline to write a LOR.

[Bristayl]

Yes, I do understand that. I just meant that they would upload them to the Common App and we would decide which to send to which colleges. I know we won't be able to see them.

[regentrude]

22 minutes ago, bctnln1059 said:

Yes, I do understand that. I just meant that they would upload them to the Common App and we would decide which to send to which colleges. I know we won't be able to see them.

Writing a LOR is a big time commitment and a huge favor the writers do the student. Please make sure that your student knows in advance that she will actually be using the LOR before wasting a professor's time.

[Bristayl]

I'm sorry that I am not wording things well. All I meant was that different colleges might receive a different combination of recommendations, not that we would ask for recommendations that we wouldn't use.

[daijobu]

7 hours ago, bctnln1059 said:

I'm sorry that I am not wording things well. All I meant was that different colleges might receive a different combination of recommendations, not that we would ask for recommendations that we wouldn't use.

 

This is what my dd is thinking of doing.  She'll be sending different letters to different schools.  

[GoodGrief]

8 hours ago, regentrude said:

Writing a LOR is a big time commitment and a huge favor the writers do the student. Please make sure that your student knows in advance that she will actually be using the LOR before wasting a professor's time.

We actually found that it was wise to ask several people because in the end not everybody got theirs into the Common App. It was an intimidating format for some, and some just never got around to it.

We used different combinations of recommenders for different schools too.