Digi-sign Letter of Recommendation for a Teacher Colleague Made Easy

Esign recommendation letter

today i want to talk about why i believe i got into the schools that i got into and why i think teacher recommendations are so important and why i think a lot of students are missing the point of what it means to try your hardest in school right now get good grades all that stuff apply to a great school and to try to channel whatever passions that you have right now into something fruitful and valuable to your school to your community in the future this is what schools look for in applicants especially at the top tier harvard yale princeton stanford mit these places i think really want exceptional students and i just want to share with you one of those one of the components i think that made my application so successful i was good enough to get into into yale which i went and graduated from princeton columbia dartmouth a bunch of other ivys so i'm gonna read to you today my one of my teacher recommendations uh from my history teacher and maybe try to show you or highlight what someone else saw in me when i was in high school when i didn't know anything when i was an idiot um but saw something something valuable enough in order to share to the admissions committee and now looking back why i believe i got into the schools that i got into um because i know there's some craziness right now what should i be doing what teacher recommendation should i get um what should my essays be about but i think it's much more important to talk about the story and about the individual rather than all the other superficial things that matter but don't matter nearly as much as who you are and what you're bringing to the table as a human being uh to preface this this references some um some things like some of my hobbies at the time and they're still my hobbies today like i like collecting old fountain pens so there's a bunch of references to some fountain pens in here this was something that i wrote a lot of my essays about fountain pen collecting vintage fountain pen history research and buying and selling things like that so with that said i'll read you my one of my recommendations that got me into uh the ivies that i got into october 2010 oh my god to whom it may concern is the best student that i've ever had the pleasure of teaching this is no small feat i've had many excellent ivy caliber students however it was obvious right away that george was brilliant and different than all the rest we were discussing the declaration of independence in class and the question was asked why do some things seem to last like the declaration of independence and others seem to fade with time i mentioned that whether there are a few seminal recordings of robert johnson or shakespeare's son sonnet 116 those things which speak to a deeper part of our being survived the test of time we moved into contemporary examples of what each of us thought was something that would survive the test of time george suggested the classic parker 51 pen i have heard of parker pens but i have no idea that the parker 51 was the quintessential pen or that george was our resident expert later on that week as i searched through a junk drawer in my kitchen i ran across a parker pen on the side was written in silver lettering pan am and as i inspected the pen closer i realized this was a genuine parker 51 the same pen george was talking about in class at first i thought how ironic a classic pen advertising a defunct airline i had and have no idea where this pen was from or if it had always been in the drawer but a realization dawned upon me i was reminded of learning a new vocabulary term and then seeing it several times the following week seemingly for the first time and wondering whether like the pen those words had always been there this is george's gift he has the ability to see the ordinary differently than the rest of us what's more george has the ability to tell others see it differently too i found having him in class not only made his fellow students want to be more erudite it made me feel the same way seldom does the student have this effect on a teacher but george is no ordinary student whether he is riffing on the trumpet with went marsalis in lincoln center or playing in the all-state band george humbly and quietly brings his brilliance to bear he brings it to baron his music and his studies george scored a near perfect on the sat and remains at the very top of his high school class having taken a who's who of the toughest classes we offer nine ap classes at last count these are all important in understanding george but there's more he is modest and well-liked by his peers george makes the intellectual cool and people love to be around him when i started this letter yesterday i thought of the parker 51 that started it all as i looked for the pen i realized it wasn't in the kitchen drawer i described it to my wife and she said she had thrown it out that very morning because it was out of ink digging through the garbage i pulled the parker 51 out of the trash nonetheless for wear rescued from oblivion one last time i decided upon writing this letter to give george the pen because really if it wasn't for him i wouldn't have known it existed anyway and it's still even ten plus years later it actually still kind of gets me a little bit emotional again this is actually the pen uh that my teacher gave me and if you want to look up the parker 51 one of the greatest pens of all time one of the greatest design pens of all time um still love it still the best the reason why i read the letter that i was able to get after applying and getting into school and everything it's not about oh look at me look how great i am look how smart i am i don't want that to be the thing that comes across with this because trust me i was an idiot when i was in high school maybe i still am but the thing that i am still touched by is that my teacher at this time was able to tell more about me to the admissions committee in his letter then i was able to write about myself in all the different essays and all the different extracurriculars and all the different ways that i wanted to show how great i was how smart i was how much i deserved to be at these top elite institutions and now in hindsight i realize all for the wrong reasons but i was fortunate that there was someone who was able to see more than just the superficial yeah it's great that you get good grades yeah it's great that you get good sat scores yeah it's great that you take ap classes yeah it's great that you have your activities but can someone else an adult talk about you as someone special someone who's unique someone that can bring something valuable to the community that you want to be a part of that's why it's crazy even after reading this and it's been a while to see this it's as i said it still kind of gets me a little bit emotional because the story about something as simple as this pen i think had so much resonance to someone who believed in me so much to write this story down true story crazy story actually poetic i believe um but that was then one of the main reasons why i got into the schools i got into and maybe a little anecdote just to finish this up one time when i was on campus at yale and it turns out that i ran into one of the admissions officers who um my regional admissions officer and uh apparently he would always ask what you wrote your essays about or whatever and he was like oh when i when i was telling about some of the stuff i wrote about about fountain pens and about the parker 51 which was part of some of my essays he's like oh you're the fountain pen kid and your teacher gave you that pen i'm like what like it that was crazy that that was the connection or that but that but in reality maybe that told all they needed to know and i was there oh trying to be president of this club or that club trying to get this award or this score or whatever and this was still out of time when i was still trying to get uh a perfect score in the sat and all this craziness but now looking back i think the thing that mattered most was the passion or the thing that i cared about the most which i was maybe even a little bit embarrassed about or didn't really think was that all that important but once again that was highlighted by a teacher by an adult by someone who interacted on an intellectual level a personal level that was able to share this story to um really fight for a position and to you know try to convince this admissions committee that i was worthy hopefully of trying to continue this passion and this interest even in something as insignificant or seemingly insignificant as um as vintage fountain pens so i just wanted to read you that i wanted to read you that because i know a lot of people are asking about well what should my essay say or social my teacher recommendations and i know right now especially is a crazy time to be applying to school but my advice that i like to give you is more of that don't be the idiot and instead try your best to highlight and to exposing the show and to share the things that truly matter the things that make you interesting that make you unique that make you eager to learn that make you excited and i hope that that doesn't sound cliche i hope that that doesn't sound hollow because in my opinion this letter was the reason why i got into the schools that i got into in many ways this pen is the reason why i got into a lot of those schools because that story uh almost seems stranger than fiction