Counselor Letters of Recommendation Matter. Here’s Why

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

“Belinda Myers wears oversized striped men’s shirts to school nearly every day.”

My best guess is that someone had made a copy of this student’s college letter of recommendation on the school’s Xerox machine, and left the original on the glass plate. So, I read it.

It would prove to make a world of difference, since I later became a college counselor, and had to write hundreds, if not thousands, of these letters. My graduate school training taught me nothing—absolutely, positively nothing—about this, so all I was left with was my unhoned wits, and my vague recollection of the start of that one college letter I had read years ago.

It’s getting to be that time of year again, where counselors with hundreds of kids will be asked to write a letter of recommendation for them as if each student were their own child. Some colleges let counselors check a box where they can choose not to write a letter at all, simply because their caseload is so big, they don’t think they can really do the student any justice.

But that only means that the counselor letters that do get written, and get the job done, mean that much more to getting a student into college.

So try this:

The goal of the letter is, on one page, a reflection of who the student is, how they see the world, what matters to them, and what they’ve done in high school. Happily, you can say some of this without going into huge detail, as long as you know a little about the student, and a story or two that mirrors their life. 

Gather your data so that you can achieve the goal. Sure, you have way too many students—but you see nearly all of them a couple of times a year, to schedule classes, or do vocational searches. Change these exercises so that it’s less about the task at hand, and more about them. If the vocational search says they should be a mortician (by the way—they all say that), ask the student how they feel about that, or what they had hoped the results would say, and why. There’s a story. Managing those pesky schedule changes? “We can talk about your change once you tell me the best and weirdest things that happened to you this summer.” It may not tell you a story you can share with a college, but it will tell you about the student. Six or eight of these interactions, and you’re good to go.

Remember that the college isn’t looking to your letter to talk about academic readiness (that’s the transcript’s job), other than a sentence about if they are curious about the world, and how hard their classes were compared to the rest of the curriculum. The real question your letter needs to address is “Who are we getting if we admit this kid?” That’s not a letter—that’s a conversation over drinks at the end of the day. Write your letter with that in mind.

Start with the story. The line I quoted above was the first line in the letter. Not adjectives, not platitudes—a genuine look at who the student was. After the story, talk about their academics, discuss where they’re headed (because you asked about this during your junior interview with them). Finish with another story, or more of the first story, and you’re good to go.

You went into this job to get to know students, and make a difference in their lives. Get to know their story, and share it with their colleges.