Let's face it, the college admissions process is full of inequities. We often focus on the discrepancies of student performance in standardized testing, essay writing, and who gets in and why. But one thing that we rarely discuss is how the quality of letters of recommendation varies tremendously from high school to high school.
School counselors at public high schools have limited time to write letters of recommendation given their caseloads and other responsibilities. Many times they have to write a letter for a student they barely know. When I made the switch from being a dean of admissions to a school counselor, I realized it's a whole lot easier to read a letter of recommendation than it is to write one.
The role of the school counselor's letter is not what most people think. It shouldn't be a laundry list of a student's activities and achievements. That information is already in the application. The best letters show insight into the person behind the activities and achievements, and the environment they come from. But that is hard to do when a counselor doesn't know the student that well.
If school counselors have limited time, I recommend that they ask their students these five questions in person or over email:
1. How does the school environment of our high school shape you? In other words, what inherent challenges or benefits impact your education?
2. How does your family situation and background shape who you are right now? (It doesn't matter if you come from a seemingly "perfect" family or the opposite of that, both can impact the person you have become.)
3. What is the one thing you know you are really good at, even if you haven't had as much time to explore it yet?
4. How do you know #3 is what you are really good at? Tell me a story that demonstrates this.
5. How do you want to be remembered, not in adjectives but through nouns, by teachers and students at this high school?
These five questions are leading ones. They force introspection. They challenge traditional ways of thinking about high school students. And they spark a beautiful story waiting to be told.
Each answer can be a paragraph. And, if a student doesn't answer all of the questions, so be it. There's nothing wrong with a three or four paragraph letter when it's personalized.
READ MORE: Filling Out College Applications? Do This First
In my first year as a school counselor, I thought about the letter of recommendation I would have wanted as a high school student. So, I asked myself these same questions. Then I did something unorthodox. I wrote a letter for myself as a high school senior. I wrote the letter I would have wanted my school counselor to write. That exercise was life-changing. From that day on, I wrote letters of recommendation for my students that I would have wanted someone to write for me.
