How to Ask for Letters of Recommendation

Most students will ask their junior year teachers for recommendation letters. Here’s how to first establish who to ask:

• Establish a good relationship with your recommender early. Have a rough idea of who you want to ask in the first few months of the school year and put in effort to get to know this teacher. Maybe this looks like eating lunch in their classroom/going to their classroom during lunch time to chat, staying after school, and of course, staying super diligent on the work for their class specifically.

  • Speak to them about your interests, what you find fascinating in class and outside of class (maybe extracurriculars!).

  • You can also ask your club advisors if you’ve had them in your coursework.

  • You might want to ask someone who is teaching in the field you are interested in - for example, if you’re interested in history, you might ask your APUSH teacher!

• Preferably both a STEM and humanities teacher. One of each field will allow you to establish your strengths in different fields and showcase the fact that you aren’t just one dimensional. If you are interested in one area over another, make sure that you ask teachers that can reflect how your interests are multidisciplinary.

• Choose teachers who know you well. Maybe this means they’ve been your teacher for more than one year (if not, that’s totally fine too – you can ask someone who you spend a lot of time with outside of school as well (volunteering, part-time job, etc.))

  • As a note, you also want to choose someone who can really showcase your growth and/or improvement. This means that if you may have struggled in math sometimes, but ultimately got good grades/learned the content, that might be a good idea to ask this teacher.

• Talk to upperclassmen friends - this will allow you to know who writes good rec letters and/or submits them on time.

Now that you know who to ask, how do you ask?

• Ask in person. Towards the end of the school year - potentially after the AP tests (so April/May of your junior year or 2-3 months before end of the school year) - approach your teacher and ask them in person for a recommendation letter for the upcoming college application process.

• Follow up with an email. After asking verbally, it’ll be a good idea to send them a formal email reminding them of their obligation a couple weeks after you ask so that you have them all in before the end of junior year. Most recommenders will write this letter in the coming school year so don’t feel like you need to pressure them.

• You might also send them a copy of your resume so they really know what you are about/what you do after class so they can expand on your commitment to learning about a specific subject area.

• Remind them again at the start of senior year! Especially if applying to schools Early Action and/or Early Decision, ensuring recommenders know of certain deadlines can be helpful - but don’t be overbearing. Thus, send this reminder in September.
  

  • For example, I had a Oct. 15 deadline, which was earlier than most other application deadlines. Because of this, I let my teachers know about the deadline way ahead of time!

• Make sure to thank them! This is highly important. Writing recommendations is not easy. Thank your teachers throughout the process and always offer to answer any questions and be proactive. Once you’ve submitted your applications, thank them again!

Hopefully that’s helped you establish how to ask your recommenders and when to do so! As always, RRA is here to help and can also provide you tips and reminders to ask these recommenders. Join us next week for SAT study tips!