Is it too early to ask teachers for LORs?

[Anonymous]

My DC knows one of the teachers they want to ask. Is it too early? If so, when should kids ask? After spring break? May?

[Anonymous]

As someone who writes a a good number of letters each year, my advice is to wait until your child has their common app up and ready to go before you ask. I prefer when students ask me and then immediately have the link sent. It helps me organize my time in doing them.

Also, students shouldn't be afraid to politely nudge someone who hasn't done their letter after a month or so. Sometimes the email from common app ends up in my junk or my life just gets hectic. I appreciate a polite inquiry after a fair amount of time because there's a good chance I didn't see the email the first time. Don't just wait endlessly and then reach out in a panic days before things are due.

[Anonymous]

My kids are in FCPS. It varies by teacher, but general rule of thumb was week after spring break junior year. My DD had a teacher who wanted requests later and done in a certain way. And basically told her classes she would send out an email with instructions for requesting LORs.

Some teacher do write them over the summer. And some cap the number they will write.

[Anonymous]

Ask before the end of junior year. Early is better, since some teachers draw the line at a certain # (it is a lot of work).

[Anonymous]

I think it is best to ask in April or May of junior year. Some teachers write these over the summer.

[Anonymous]

I think its fine to ask in April/May just to ASK them if they will provide a LOR. Then they know they'll get the link when the CA opens.

[Anonymous]

Our school has the juniors request in April or May.

[Anonymous]

Don't know the policy in your DC's school. But my son goes to a large public school which has a policy that limits two recommenders per student. Most of the high demand teachers (e.g., STEM and humanities) tend to get a lot of requests by early spring. Some of them limit themselves to 5-6 requests since it is a significant time commitment for teachers. There are also teachers who don't accept LoR requests till fall of senior year. So understand the school policy and teachers own policy while deciding when to request. Finally, none of the senior year teachers are going to write an LoR since they don't know your DC well enough when the LoR is due. So at a minimum they should identify their 2-3 recommenders by early spring and try to establish a rapport with them so they can write meaningful personalized feedback in their LoR.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are in FCPS. It varies by teacher, but general rule of thumb was week after spring break junior year. My DD had a teacher who wanted requests later and done in a certain way. And basically told her classes she would send out an email with instructions for requesting LORs.

Some teacher do write them over the summer. And some cap the number they will write.

This. 100%

[Anonymous]

My son is in a public HS. When he met with his guidance counselor and the college counselor a few weeks ago (the mandatory meeting that all juniors have in Jan/Feb) he was told to ask ASAP, which he did (and both agreed to write for him.)

Of the two teachers he asked, one has *supposedly* stopped taking any more requests. (I say supposedly because my son heard it from one kid who heard it from another kid, etc.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who writes a a good number of letters each year, my advice is to wait until your child has their common app up and ready to go before you ask. I prefer when students ask me and then immediately have the link sent. It helps me organize my time in doing them.

Also, students shouldn't be afraid to politely nudge someone who hasn't done their letter after a month or so. Sometimes the email from common app ends up in my junk or my life just gets hectic. I appreciate a polite inquiry after a fair amount of time because there's a good chance I didn't see the email the first time. Don't just wait endlessly and then reach out in a panic days before things are due.

I prefer to know before the end of the school year, so I can make note of things like a particularly insightful comment, to offer as an anecdote and so I can write during the summer. Since common app doesn’t open till a couple weeks before the end of summer I would not want a student to wait for that. Having said that, our LOR’s go through scoir, so we don’t interact with common app as teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't know the policy in your DC's school. But my son goes to a large public school which has a policy that limits two recommenders per student. Most of the high demand teachers (e.g., STEM and humanities) tend to get a lot of requests by early spring. Some of them limit themselves to 5-6 requests since it is a significant time commitment for teachers. There are also teachers who don't accept LoR requests till fall of senior year. So understand the school policy and teachers own policy while deciding when to request. Finally, none of the senior year teachers are going to write an LoR since they don't know your DC well enough when the LoR is due. So at a minimum they should identify their 2-3 recommenders by early spring and try to establish a rapport with them so they can write meaningful personalized feedback in their LoR.

This seems like such a huge demand in public school teachers that isn’t all that useful for most students. How can they cap it at 5-6? If every kid needs Rex’s from 2 jr year teachers and conventional wisdom is a STEM and a social science/humanities isn’t every kid going to need to ask either their jr year history or English teacher for the most part?

If every class has about 30 kids in it…the math doesn’t add up for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't know the policy in your DC's school. But my son goes to a large public school which has a policy that limits two recommenders per student. Most of the high demand teachers (e.g., STEM and humanities) tend to get a lot of requests by early spring. Some of them limit themselves to 5-6 requests since it is a significant time commitment for teachers. There are also teachers who don't accept LoR requests till fall of senior year. So understand the school policy and teachers own policy while deciding when to request. Finally, none of the senior year teachers are going to write an LoR since they don't know your DC well enough when the LoR is due. So at a minimum they should identify their 2-3 recommenders by early spring and try to establish a rapport with them so they can write meaningful personalized feedback in their LoR.

This seems like such a huge demand in public school teachers that isn’t all that useful for most students. How can they cap it at 5-6? If every kid needs Rex’s from 2 jr year teachers and conventional wisdom is a STEM and a social science/humanities isn’t every kid going to need to ask either their jr year history or English teacher for the most part?

If every class has about 30 kids in it…the math doesn’t add up for me.

Not every teacher limits the number of recs they write, but some do. But there are others who will write as many as requested. My own sons APUSH teacher wrote recs for whoever requested one. Also, you can get recs from teachers who taught you during sophomore or junior year even though colleges prefer the latter.