Skip To Main Content

Letters of Recommendation

How to Help Ensure the Very Best Letter for YOU is Written:

Letters of recommendation can serve a critical role in the application review process.

  • For highly selective schools, letters of recommendation are one of the few ways to decipher the character, potential, and academic skills of an applicant from the pool of incredibly talented applicants.
  • For bubble students (students who do not meet a college's automatic acceptance criteria or the middle 50% of admitted students' GPA, class rank, and/or ACT/SAT score), letters of recommendation can be the deciding factor. 

To ensure you receive the best letter of recommendation for your circumstances, know and follow these steps:

Letter of Recommendation:

  1. Complete and update your resume (in Xello). 
  2. Ask your recommender(s) two weeks before you would like the letter completed.
  3. Provide your recommender(s) and dean your resume. 

Letter of Recommendation for highly selective colleges:

  1. Complete the student self-assessment.
  2. Ask all recommenders (including your dean) by October 1. 
  3. Provide your recommenders your student self-assessment. 

If you are using the CommonApp, your dean is your "counselor". All deans have the opportunity to submit letters of recommendation on the CommonApp. They also answer a series of questions about a student's attributes and academic performance.