About MIT Recommendation Letters

About MIT Recommendation Letters At MIT, we require all applicants to send in two letters of recommendation one from a math or science teacher (Evaluation A) and one from a humanities teacher (Evaluation B). If you are applying this year early action (November 1 deadline) or regular action (January 1 deadline) I hope that you have already asked your teachers if they can write a letter on your behalf. Please recognize that teachers are very busy teachers in this country are seriously overworked and underpaid; I hope you will respect their time. So whether your application deadline is only weeks away, or still months away, please have these conversations now or very soon, if you have not yet done so. I recommend that you find some face-to-face time alone with each teacher to ask them in person to write your letter, and to have a conversation about it. This is a much better approach than just leaving the recommendation form on their chair and running away. I recommend giving them all of the recommendation forms for every one of the schools youre applying to at once. This is also a good time to tell them about why youre applying to each school, and how you see yourself as a match for each place. Teachers often find these conversations very helpful. If a teacher asks you to write the recommendation for them do not do this (these requests rarely happen in the United States, but do happen with some frequency abroad). Instead, ask another teacher. Teacher recommendations should only be written by the teacher and by no one else. If you attend school outside the United States, and have teachers who are not English fluent, this is okay you can still have them write you a recommendation. They can write in their native language; the letter can then be translated. There are many sources for translation, and one that you may find helpful is an English teacher at your high school. Official translations from agencies are also good. If you send us a translated recommendation, please include both the English translated copy and the original in the native language. Who should you ask? You should certainly ask a teacher who has taught you in an academic class in high school (i.e. no middle school, and no basket weaving class). Ideally, this will also be a teacher who knows you as more than just a student who does well on all the tests. We find that the best recommendations are written by teachers who know an applicant well as both a student and a person. For example: the English teacher who is your newspaper advisor, the math teacher who is your math team coach, the biology teacher who is your field hockey coach, the history teacher that you talk about politics and health care policy with, the physics teacher who you challenge each day for the best time on the New York Times crossword puzzle, the chemistry teacher who is your mentor. Also you do not need to choose the teacher that teaches the subject that you want to major in. You do not need to choose the teacher from whom you received the best grade. You do not need to choose a senior year teacher but you should choose someone with whom you have an ongoing relationship. You can choose a teacher who has retired or moved to a different school, as long as that teacher meets the above criteria. The process is the same in this case. Recommendations can be submitted in one of two ways. The primary method of submission is MITs teacher recommendation form, which is available for download from your MyMIT application portal. This form is to be mailed in to MIT. The address is: Office of Admissions; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Room 3-108; 77 Massachusetts Avenue; Cambridge, MA 02139-4307; USA. We prefer that teachers use our forms, but its okay if your high school has its own form, or if teachers want to use the Common Apps paper recommendation form. It is also okay common, in fact for teachers to write their own letter and not answer the questions on our form. We just ask that your teacher attach that letter to our form with your name and date of birth clearly indicated and that the letter address the questions on our form. We also welcome teacher evaluations submitted through Naviance via the Docufide system. On Naviance, teachers should see MIT on the list of colleges to which these items can be sent. For security and other reasons, we do not accept electronic documents from other online sources at this time. I get many questions about what subject teachers can write the A or B eval. As a general rule, if the teacher teaches a class that would count towards MITs math science requirement, that teacher should fill out the A Evaluation; if the teacher teaches a class that would count towards MITs humanities, arts, and social sciences requirement, that teacher should fill out the B Evaluation. Purely as an exercise, I made a list of different kinds of classes that high school students might take, and tried to classify them as an A Evaluation or B Evaluation as best I could. A few are pretty fuzzy (and could be categorized reasonably either way no worries), but most seem pretty straight forward: A Evaluation potential subjects Math Biology Chemistry Physics Earth Science Environmental Science Computer Science Engineering Technology Science Research (as a class) B Evaluation potential subjects English History French Spanish German Italian Russian Chinese Japanese Hebrew Latin Economics Government Psychology Social Studies Art Music Geography In some countries/curriculums (for example, the British A Levels and its equivalents across the world), students may not have any current teachers who could write a B Evaluation for them. This is okay; we understand. Often, we see students go back to a teacher from earlier in secondary school (for example, an O Level teacher). In extreme circumstances, we would accept any current teacher for the B Evaluation. I also get questions about supplemental recommendations. Going through the same exercise as above Recommendations that would probably not be an A nor a B Evaluation, but could be a supplemental recommendation Research mentor (who doesnt teach you in a class) A coach (who is not also one of your teachers) Music instructor (outside of school) An internship/job supervisor (even if for school credit) A third teacher at your school beyond the A B Evaluations Your principal/headmaster Most applicants, and most admitted students, submit no supplemental recommendations. Some applicants and admitted students submit one supplemental recommendation; a few submit two. Submitting more supplemental recommendations will not disqualify you, but it is rarely necessary. If you do submit a supplemental recommendation, be sure to include the MIT Supplemental Document Cover Sheet, which is available for download from your MyMIT application portal. Supplemental recommendations cannot be submitted online. You can track whether or not MIT has received and processed the letter on your MyMIT tracking page. Please allow up to two weeks processing time during peak application season. If the letter has not shown up as processed by the application deadline, do not worry. You may wish to very politely check in with the teacher, but you do not need to constantly hound them. As long as you have given your teachers sufficient time to write on your behalf, they will get your letter in to us. And we are much more flexible with teacher recommendations that come in a little late than we are with late student application materials. And when MIT does process your teachers letter please thank your teacher. Its the nice thing to do, and they deserve it. I hope this is helpful! [Please note: with this entry, I speak for MIT Admissions. While much of this advice is universal, YMMV1 with other schools for the specific tips, tricks, and rules]