For most high-school students, college applications are the first time they’ll ask for a letter of recommendation. But it likely won’t be the last time since many job applications also require letters of recommendation. The process you follow for college is a good learning experience and teaches a skill that can be very valuable later in life.

Why Colleges Ask for Letters of Recommendation

Colleges ask for letters of recommendation to learn things about you that they can’t get from your transcripts, test scores, or résumé. 

Specifically, they want to understand your:

• Character: Are you a person of integrity? Have you shown character traits necessary for college success, like resilience and grit?
• Class Participation and Interaction With Others: Do you participate much in class or relatively little? Do you speak up, or are you shy? Are you a leader on your team? How do you interact with adults and your peers? How well does the student work with those they don’t know well, people in different social circumstances, or members of the school staff?
• Intellectual Traits: Do you have traits colleges value, like leadership, initiative, or academic curiosity? Colleges want to know how you showed creativity on an assignment or organized a group to solve a problem. Those kinds of stories say a lot about who you are.
• Academic Ability: Will you be able to handle the work the university will require? Students sometimes get good grades just due to help from tutors or parents. But colleges want to know you can do the work yourself. Can you handle the strain of a full academic course load at college easily?
• Ability to Overcome Challenges: How have you faced and overcome academic or personal challenges? A good letter of recommendation will talk about how a student responded to adversity, as that is an essential factor in admissions decisions.
• Extenuating Circumstances: If a student succeeded despite exceptional situations, colleges want to know the details of those circumstances.

Who Should You Ask?

The best recommenders, as Skye Telka, a college admissions counselor for Warren Wilson College, says, are from writers who “obviously know their students and can speak with authenticity and conviction about the students.” That means you should ask teachers or coaches who know you well and with whom you have a good relationship. These relationships can drive the level of detail in a letter of recommendation. Both positive and negative details are meaningful in a letter of recommendation.

Ideally, ask your counselor and two academic teachers from 11th grade – one a teacher from a humanities, social science, or language course and one from a science or mathematics course. That isn’t a hard and fast rule; not all colleges require these recommendations. However, the two kinds of teacher recommendations demonstrate the student’s ability to do well in courses where finding the “correct” answer matters and in courses where critical thinking, discussion, and navigating ambiguity and disagreement matter.

Tips for Asking For a Letter of Recommendation

Here are some tips students should know as they approach this process.

• Start Early: For college admissions, as in life, the process of getting a recommendation starts long before you ask. Build relationships with teachers in school. If it’s a subject you enjoy or a teacher you have a good connection with, build a relationship that could eventually lead to a letter of recommendation.
• Look Carefully at the Requirements: Sometimes, colleges ask for letters of recommendation from specific people. Sometimes, they want a recommendation to address a particular topic, especially if you are applying to study the sciences, math, or visual and performing arts. If so, make sure you follow the rules.
• Give the Writer All the Relevant Information: Create a well-written résumé and send it to your recommender. Then, they can see everything about you—academics, extracurriculars, colleges, and majors—all in one place and write a letter that best encapsulates their case for you. 
• Make it Easy for Your Recommender: Don’t make the writers search through their email to find your résumé or the requirements for the letter. Make it easy for them, and you’ll benefit. If you’re sending an email, put all the information in a single email.
• Respect Your Recommender’s Deadlines: Many teachers have deadlines for all the information for a recommendation. Many also have a maximum number of letters they will agree to write. So ask early, and when you do, ask when the teacher needs the material. And be sure to be on time.

Tips for Teachers About Writing Effective Letters of Recommendation

Sometimes, teachers need tips on what to include in their letters of recommendation. Here are a few helpful resources:

• Arizona State University has a helpful template for a letter of recommendation, which can serve as an outline.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology admissions website explains what makes for a strong letter of recommendation.
• Jeff Schiffmann, former Director of Admissions at Tulane University, provides some great dos and don’ts in writing letters of recommendation.

Building relationships is a habit you can create as early as high school. It will pay off in spades over a lifetime. No matter what career or field of study you pursue, relationships drive success. And those relationships pay off when it comes time to ask for recommendations.