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How To Write College Recommendations

It’s that time of year again; here comes the flood of college recommendation requests. Each year I get asked to write several of these.

Here are a few steps I’ve taken to make this easier:

1. I ask for a resume of what the student has been involved with in school and ministry during high school. I’m often surprised at how much I don’t know about the students.

2. In with the resume, I ask them to include honors and awards they’ve earned during high school.

When writing the recommendations, I use these concepts:

1. Every student gets a great recommendation. I leave out anything negative and focus only on the positive. I learned from a good friend years ago to assume the student will accidentally come across the recommendation some day. I don’t want this to become a hindrance to being able to have a longterm influence in that student’s life.

2. I use the student’s name at least 5 times during the letter so that the university reading it will associate his name with those characteristics.

3. If accurate, I include a line saying something like, “I hate to see (insert student’s name) move on from our ministry, but I am incredibly excited to see him move on to the next phase of life where I know he’ll make an equally great contribution. I know he’ll be an incredibly great asset to the student body of (insert name of university).”

4. Some students are so similar that I’ll reuse the same letter, but change the pertinent information to customize it for each student. If, however, both students are applying to the same university, I’ll be careful not to do this.