Examples of College Recommendation Letters That Impressed Schools

Because of the competitiveness of the college admissions process, every piece of an application matters, including a student's recommendation letters. College recommendation letters can serve as powerful testimonials about a student's accomplishments, and the best letters demonstrate a candidate's potential for greatness, according to admissions officers.

"We like to see recommendation letters where the contacts obviously know their students and can speak with authenticity and conviction about the students," Skye Telka, a college admissions counselor for Warren Wilson College, a liberal arts school in North Carolina, wrote in an email.

Austin Brass, the director of undergraduate admissions at Daemen College, a regional university in upstate New York, says effective endorsements are not the ones that are filled with the most effusive praise. A recommender's use of complimentary adjectives does not typically sway him one way or the other, he says. What makes a recommendation letter powerful is when it includes interesting details and anecdotes that illustrate who a student is, he says.

[Read: How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation for College.]

"A good letter of recommendation shines light on to the student's positive qualities that we would never know otherwise," Brass wrote in an email. "The best recommendation letters leave me knowing something about the student I didn't know before, while giving examples that show different aspects of the student that are not possible to learn from a transcript, resume or essay."

U.S. News spoke with college admissions officers and asked them to share stories about the most outstanding recommendation letters they've read during their careers. Here are a few examples of recommendation letters that impressed admissions officers.

Examples of Situations When Recommendation Letters Swayed Admissions Officers

Admissions officials note that there are various types of recommendation letters that can have a positive impact on a student's admissions odds. Those types of letters include ones that explain a student's difficult personal circumstances, showcase a student's remarkable achievements or reveal a student's personality.

Effective recommendation letters help admissions officers imagine how a student could contribute to their class, says Kristen Capezza, the vice president of enrollment management and university communications at Adelphi University, a national university located in Garden City, New York.

"Reading about stories of perseverance, tales of transformation or simply honest accounts of the student's dedication to learning and the community help me to visualize the student as a future member of our community -- and that visualization can be the turning point for a difficult admission decision," Capezza wrote in an email.

Revelations About Challenges Faced and Overcome

Telka notes that sometimes recommendation letters explain extenuating circumstances that clarify why a student's academic performance was subpar during a particular period in high school.

For instance, Telka says she once received an application from a student who performed exceptionally well in her freshman and sophomore year, but who faltered in her junior and senior year. A recommendation letter provided context for the student's academic struggles and provided reassurance that the applicant is indeed hard-working and capable, Telka says.

The letter explained that the student's mother was critically ill, and the student had assumed the responsibility of parenting her own siblings, becoming her family's caregiver. Because of this letter, the Warren Wilson admissions committee opted to accept the student despite her lackluster grades, Telka says.

Information about a student's difficulties can not only mitigate deficits in an application, but also increase scholarship opportunities, Telka says. She adds that if a recommendation letter is especially compelling, the admissions committee might offer a student a scholarship.

[Read: A Complete Guide to the College Application Process.]

Brass notes that heartfelt recommendation letters about problems a student has faced often sway admissions officers. Brass says that he was once blown away by a recommendation letter that described a student's resilience in spite of overwhelming adversity.

"The student's parents and grandparents were all incarcerated, and all immediate relatives had succumbed (whether in jail or overdosed) to the opioid epidemic in their rural Appalachian town," Brass says. He notes that the student had done well in high school despite those circumstances, achieving solid grades and test scores and participating in extracurricular activities. "All of this student's credentials were done while being homeless, sleeping on friends' couches or living in various foster homes," Brass says, adding that these already impressive achievements seemed even more outstanding given the student's obstacles.

Evidence of Extraordinary Abilities and Passions

Admissions officers say there are some recommendation letters that convey a student's strong interest in and aptitude for a specific academic discipline. For example, Telka says she was amazed by a recommendation letter for a prospective agriculture student that was written by the student's employer at an apple orchard. The student had been working to revive a nearly extinct heirloom apple variety by planting it in various places.

"Because I had such context of what they had already achieved, it allowed me to reach out to faculty on campus (and) reach out to a couple of endowed scholarship opportunities," Telka says.

[See: 10 Ways to Excel in College Admissions Interviews.]

When a student says he or she is strongly committed to a specific field or a particular type of community service, it is a plus if that statement is corroborated by a third party who writes a recommendation letter on the student's behalf, Telka says.

She also likes to learn in recommendation letters whether a student has unusual interests. "We like to see nuggets of authenticity and anything that makes the student stand out," she says. "Clubs, extracurricular activities or anything else that makes a student unique. For example, we had one student who founded the juggling club at their high school. That sticks with you."

Strong Character

A recommendation letter may also offer insight into what makes a student special as a person, Capezza says. One recommendation letter that sticks out to her was one she received about a student in a military family who had moved across the country. The letter, which was written by a high school counselor, described how the student in question had been required to adjust to the various places where he moved.

"Throughout it all, the student was able to show upward trajectory in the grades and the types of classes being taken, but it also spoke to the student's ability to adapt to new situations," Capezza says. "No matter how overwhelming and daunting it was, the student was up for a new challenge and really learned to become his own self-advocate, and it was just a story of transformation by way of circumstance."

The best person to write a college applicant a letter of recommendation is someone who knows the applicant well enough to describe the applicant in detail, Capezza says. "It's really someone who can speak to you as a person and some part of your journey," she says, adding that a college hopeful shouldn't automatically assume that a teacher who gave them a high grade will write them an eloquent recommendation letter. Ask for a recommendation letter from the teacher with whom you have the strongest rapport, Capezza suggests. "That, to me, makes for a more powerful letter, because it will be more personalized and less generic."

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