If you’ve played your cards right and waived your FERPA rights to see your teacher’s or counselor’s letter of recommendation, you won’t necessarily know what they write about you (unless you take Ivy Coach’s advice and send your recommenders anecdotes detailing your time as their student to help guide their writing). But sometimes your recommenders will take it upon themselves to show you what they’ve written whether you like it or not. You should still waive your FERPA rights if this is the case, as admissions officers will notice if you refuse to do so and suddenly your letters of recommendation won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on (or the PDFs to which they’re attached, for that matter!). Submitting a letter of recommendation with your FERPA rights still intact is equivalent to a doctor practicing medicine without regard for HIPAA.  

Most teachers and counselors think they’ve knocked their letter of recommendation out of the park even while filling it with clichés and nonspecific information that could apply to any student. Unfortunately, the average letter of recommendation fails to make an impact at elite admissions offices. The bright side is that if you see what your recommender has written, this is a perfect opportunity to correct the course and encourage them to focus on your intellectual curiosity exhibited in their classroom (for the teacher) or how you’ve taken advantage of your school’s opportunities and resources to pursue a singular hook (for the counselor). You’ve been given a rare second chance to ensure your recommenders show up for you, so don’t be afraid to push back on what they’ve written — politely and with a tremendous amount of gratitude for all they’ve already done, of course!

Successful Letters of Recommendation Require Trust

But what if you don’t see what your recommenders have written? Most of the time, you won’t. But this doesn’t mean resigning yourself to the luck of the draw. If you choose a teacher (preferably a junior year teacher from a core subject) with great care and strategy, one who knows you well and truly has your best interests at heart, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble. And no, it’s usually not the English teacher that writes the best recommendation — a misconception we’ve long sought to dispel. But even if you do everything right, send your recommender a curated list of compelling anecdotes that paint the picture of you as a highly admissible and likable student, and fill out your counselor forms in vivid detail; you still have to trust the process.

Generic letters don’t help your odds of admission, yet they may not be the deciding factor against you. But remember that you’re still asking your teacher to do you a huge favor. The last thing you should do is throw blame around or turn your teacher or counselor against you if your admissions outcomes are less than ideal. Instead, turn to Ivy Coach to get ahead of this problem.

How Ivy Coach Helps You Get Strategic Letters of Recommendation 

At Ivy Coach, we help our students help their teachers and school counselors write their letters of recommendation. How exactly do we do that? Most teachers and school counselors don’t want to devote much of their summer months to writing letters of recommendation for their students. It’s tiresome. It’s boring. It’s unpaid work, and often, the students aren’t even appreciative (we always encourage our students to be so grateful!). So, we help our students help their teachers and school counselors save valuable time. We work with our students on crafting bullet points (in complete paragraph formation, of course) that our students email to their teachers and school counselors with a note: “Just in case it might be helpful, I’ve put together…” You get the idea.

If you’re interested in optimizing your child’s odds of admission to a highly selective college through highly competitive letters of recommendation that leave out the generic fluff, fill out our complimentary consultation form, and we’ll be in touch.