More on Recommendation Letters

Reader Steven writes:

The new "common app" form does allow for PDF attachments. Some institutions (University of Michigan for example) have actually entered the 21st century & allow high school teachers to add PDF docs to the overall student recommendation & evaluation. (I just filled one out for a student last week).

Excellent. So at least the University of Michigan admissions office has fully entered into the 1990s.

I expect more of this great land's premier institutions of higher education.

I want college admissions offices to accept (and actually look at) Digital Portfolios and Multimedia Recommendations. Our students deserve no less than that the folks making decisions about their futures should be able to speak the technological language of the real world in which the students are living.

And in the case of students without access to tech? Well, to be honest, there's really no excuse for students not having access to tech. There's absolutely no reason why every high school in the USA shouldn't have at least one digital workstation open to students in their college counseling room. No reason; no excuse.

But, that's a whole other post.

One about the allocation of resources.

On Lame College Recommendation Letters

What's up with college recommendation letters being so lame?

I'm not talking about the content; I'm talking about the format.

Thinking about this as I'm working on the letter of a student who's written an occasionally brilliant blog in class over the last two years. I'm considering the irony of trying to express in a paragraph ultimately to be printed out on a sheet of paper what it is that I find so compelling about her blogging.

It doesn't have to be like this.

If I can handle relatively complex tasks such as managing my bank account and submitting grades online, I sure as heck ought to be able to submit a letter of recommendation online.

A letter full of links to succinct examples of what it is that I'm trying to describe in my blathering prose. A letter including screenshots of projects, audio of class presentations illustrating what I mean when I say that the student has an 'accessible manner of explaining complex ideas to her peers', snippets of Twitter conversations we've had in class demonstrating the student's leadership capacity and capacity for asking probing questions.

Stuff that doesn't fit on paper.

So what say ye, college admissions officers? Ready to enter the 21st century?