Step 5: Teacher Recommendations

An important part of your application is teacher recommendations. These are important because it is the only part of the application that is not written by you – which means that admission officers (people who look at your application) value teacher recommendations. In your application, you could exaggerate about how amazing you are, but if your teacher says that you are ‘mediocre’ then they are more likely to believe that you are mediocre. So how do you get a teacher recommendation? Who do you ask? How many?

How to get a teacher recommendation:
You should ask specific teachers to provide you with a teacher recommendation. You should ask them EARLY. If you ask them a week before the deadline, that will reflect poorly on you – they are likely not going to be happy with you and may write a worse recommendation. You should ask them at least a month before the deadline so that they have plenty of time to write it. As an international student, your teacher may have no idea what to write for a US university recommendation. I recommend that you send your teachers something that shows them what they should write (link them to a website – I recommend blog post about writing good recommendations, written by MIT admissions. ). You could also connect your teacher with another teacher in the school who has already written a US recommendation.

Who to ask:
Some universities require that one recommendation is academic (for example, a science teacher), and another one is personal (for example, a coach). So again, please look at the admissions site for your university. If the recommendations allow, I recommend asking a teacher who teaches the subject that you want to study in university. For example, I said that I am going to study Physics, so I asked my Physics teacher to write a recommendation. Do NOT ask a teacher who you have a bad relationship with. For example, one of my teachers told me that one student asked him for a recommendation after she had caused him a lot of trouble and stress at a class trip. He said that he was going to write one line for her recommendation (not good!).

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