Signature Service Letter of Recommendation for College Made Easy

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hey guys are you looking to make your college application super shiny awesome if so in this video i'm going to talk to you guys about how to solicit the best letters of recommendation possible [Music] you're wondering who i am my name is brook i'm an independent college consultant i've been doing this for over a decade and a half and i also help coach students two awesome scores on the sct and act the other thing that i've done is i've created two online courses for the sct and the act the best sat prep course ever the best ac 2 prep course ever check them out at supertutortv.com it's everything that you need to get an awesome score so definitely go check it out and the other thing i have is a couple of math books if those are more in your budget amazon.com is where you can find those and you can subscribe to us totally for free facebook instagram twitter youtube make sure you're joining us and if nothing else click the subscribe button people come on you know you want to okay now let's talk letters of recommendation so a few months ago i think i tweeted a really great tweet from a woman named rachel wiedom on letters of recommendation and she has some points that are some of my points and she had some other good points as well and that inspired me to think wow i should be sharing a few of her tips with kids because they're good advice so that's what i'm going to share with you is some great tips for letters of recommendation that you can use to get the best letters possible the first step in crafting a great recommendation letter is to pick the right people to write you letters of recommendation the goal for all of you on your college applications is to create this smorgasbord of delightful treats and treasures for people to evaluate and look over that express all the wonderful aspects of you and who you are so with that being the case one of the things that i learned when i was a stanford admissions volunteer before i really went into consulting was the idea that you should not repeat anything in your application meaning every essay needs to be about a different facet of who you are and that's really true the more you diversify your application the more interesting you become now that doesn't mean you don't build out themes right you might build out a theme of how you love engineering and computer science and mathematics but each essay isn't about the exact same thing right you don't write about that same computer science competition three times it's boring you want to vary your story so that we see you from all these different angles and have all these different stories on you okay the other thing is you want a portrait that's what that college or that program wants to know about right if you're applying to something academic that school wants to know how do you perform academically that's why they ask you for teachers so my first thing and pick the right people is make sure you follow the rules when you pick the right people and what i mean by follow the rules is colleges and universities have rules in terms of who you should be sending letters of recommendation from now obviously if you're out of school or you have sort of special circumstances i've had people before applying and they've been in the military or they've been out of school for several years you can contact the admissions office of an individual college you're applying to to ask if it might be more appropriate to send them a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you more recently but in any case i want you to make sure you stick to the instructions give colleges what they want but at the same time you want to select recommenders who are going to show lots of awesome things about you next piece of picking the right people is you want to figure out who has the best stories on you and that means you're going to pick somebody who knows something about you that maybe isn't blasted all over your application for example when i was in high school i knew what teacher had a good story on me it was my german teacher because i did german independent study during lunch periods because i couldn't fit into my schedule unless i sacrificed band or ap classes and so i had to work my schedule in some way to continue taking german language and she worked with me and we formed our own class that was just a person of me and i worked with her a couple times a week and then i did independent study the other days and i would study in the library on my own and we worked it out she knew that i went out of my way and i contacted the administration i went through this whole process just so i could continue in my studies and not disrupt them and stay in all my ap classes and she knew that i fought for this and that i'm sort of a go-getter in that way so i knew that she had that story on me and i thought she would write a great letter of recommendation to that end and so i selected her i'm not necessarily picking the person i like the most i'm picking the person who i think is going to add the best piece to the puzzle that is my entire application okay on another note you can also pick people in subject matters that you want to impress colleges on right so if you want to apply to the engineering program it might be a good idea to ask somebody who's a math science or engineering teacher to recommend you because they're going to know you in that context the other thing that i'm going to say when you're picking things this is my third thing is pick people who know how to tell a story so the other thing that can happen is sometimes there are some reviewers and this is like notorious who will be like write a letter yourself and i will sign it that is like my least favorite way to ever get a letter of recommendation and sometimes it's the only thing that happens and we all know that this kind of thing happens but those are generally not the best letters of recommendation because there's something about them that sounds like the rest of your essays yeah so if somebody tells you that they're going to do that you might consider asking someone else the other thing that i'm going to say about choosing the right person you want to try to if you're between people choose the person who you think is going to be a better storyteller what that means is i sometimes if i'm between you know a math teacher who's very soft-spoken and i really love the math teacher but they're really not very personal and they might not be a really great storyteller and they may be kind of awkward when it comes to writing and then i have an english teacher who's like the most verbose prose friendly you know orator of all my english teacher may write a better essay just because like she's an english teacher and she's really good at writing but that's not necessarily true sometimes i've had math teachers that are excellent storytellers so if i know i have teachers that are good storytellers you can use that as a deciding factor if you're not sure who to ask and finally my last point about picking the right people is be aware of the questions that they're going to be asked some of the questions that they're going to be asked on typical recommendations are these like weird checkbox questions they're going to be asked how well do you know the applicant how long have you known the applicant and how do they compare to other students are they the best student you've ever met or the worst and sometimes there's even a whole rig of a role of questions like how responsible do you think this person is how good at attention to detail are they how good of a writer are they they'll like go through like 20 questions with like all of these little radio buttons from zero to ten and you've gotta rank this person on zero to ten and you want tens does it always happen no sometimes it's just a letter but just know that that's the kind of questionnaire that they might be getting and they're going to compare you to other students if you're going to stack up and that teacher is going to stick your neck out for you it's a good teacher to pick okay enough about picking the right people once you've picked the right person it's time to ask okay so how do you ask i like to ask via email because it's the easiest to respond to if you ask people in person it can sometimes be kind of awkward like if you're asking your teacher in person and they want to say no or maybe they need to check their calendar or maybe they need to see how many they've already agreed to write so it can be a hard question to answer on the spot in any case you're going to ask them you're going to write a nice email you're going to tell them here's what i've been up to and here's where i'm applying and here's why i think you would be awesome to like help me out with this maybe also flatter one a little bit but make it brief make it brief don't don't take too long flatter them a little bit say you know i know you seem like you've really loved computer science and that's always inspired me and that's why i want to major in it you know also make sure you tell them when it's due and tell them what's expected is it just a letter of recommendation do they have to fill out a survey and then ask and then let it go okay and then wait for it to come back and if they come back and they say sure i'd love to write a letter for you fabulous great if the answer is i don't want to write a letter for you move on don't take it too personally if that's the case one of two things is happening or if they delay delay delay and link don't get back to you they might be just sending you a cold shoulder one of two things is occurring one there's something they know about you that gives them pause to sending the most glowing recommendation possible in which case you don't want that recommendation letter they're going to sell you out and sell you off the river and you don't want that person reviewing you okay possibility number two is this person is really busy or maybe even committed to write a hundred other letters of recommendation and then that too you don't want a person who is too busy to actually think about it and write it so regardless do not beg for letters of recommendation okay if somebody says no be polite be thoughtful say oh no problem i know you're really busy thanks for reading my message i hope you're well the other thing about asking try to give at least a couple of weeks notice it's not very polite to aspect the day before something's due you can ask the month before something's due that's even extra greater but as long as people have a couple of weeks that's pretty polite when it comes to high school some teachers will only write so many letters of recommendation so it's sometimes a really good idea to ask at the beginning of the year that doesn't mean if you haven't asked yet and it's not the beginning of the year that your life is over it's not you will still find someone to write your letters of recommendation it's their job they're your teachers they know they have to do this okay now if that person says sure i would love to write you a letter of recommendation ha then you get to write another email to them so the next thing that you're going to do is you're going to give them a big email with a lot of information that makes it really easier for them to write that letter of recommendation one thing that you should do is create like a resume of some sort or you know or you could even send like the activity section of the common app essay and a copy of your transcript or something so that will jog their memory and remind them of oh yeah i remember he was doing that student council stuff last year he talked to me about that he's so passionate about that i'm going to write about that whatever it is but it just helps them know and remember like all the things about you next thing that you want to send them is maybe your essays from your common application now if you haven't written all your essays yet at least send them an outline or like bullet points of what ideas you're planning to write your essays on the other thing you can do is you can give them some ideas on what you'd like them to emphasize now this can be things that are like soft qualities you know like if you could speak to you know what you think my potential is as a computer programmer that would be really helpful because that's the area that i'm applying to at this college right you can like lead them into that the other thing that you can do is you can also clue them in to what else you have done in your application so you don't have to do this but you can also send them a copy of your common application essay and say hey here's my common app essay my hope is that you could speak to areas that maybe my common app essay wasn't able to cover but you can also send a note don't feel any pressure to read any of this here it's just for your reference so you know what else is there and again i like the idea of emphasizing that i don't want you to copy what's in these essays but rather complement it if there's anything that i left out or that you know about me that might be good to include in addition to this stuff that would be great just be straightforward guys it's okay you don't want to sound too braggy and you ask but again you want to give them some ideas on what should i emphasize what kind of an essay are you looking for etc then describe what you're applying for right tell them what schools you're applying to tell them what majors you're applying to all that kind of good stuff and that's about it the next step is follow-up so after you've sent this you need to follow up with them most people are going to procrastinate just a heads up just like you do okay so you need to remind them a few days before it's due like don't remind them the day it's due remind them a few days before so that they have some energy that they feel like oh gosh i gotta get that done if the day of they still haven't submitted it you might send just a gentle reminder just a reminder that the thing is due today if for some reason you know anything's come up let me know or if you have any trouble let me know i'm happy to help and colleges are not as crazy if the letters of wreck are like a day late or four hours late or something and they're not going to hold that totally against you they want everything in obviously but if your application is incomplete because of a teacher and not because of you and you asked with like plenty of lead time colleges won't completely hold that against you all right next step is you say thank you that's pretty simple write an email say thanks that was so awesome and usually you guys are going to get an indication like on whatever portal you're on that the letter has been submitted or you get an email so as soon as you get that email just shoot off another email and say thank you so much for your recommendation i appreciate your time and finally check in and let them know what happened when all is said and done so if you get into said university or you get in somewhere or whenever you get into college tell the person who wrote your letter of wreck because they really want to know and there you go that is the steps to getting an awesome awesome letter of recommendation i hope you guys like this video if so please give it a thumbs up if you have any questions put them in the comments below thank you guys and i will see you guys next time good luck with your applications