Teacher Recommendation Letter: Common App Guide
How to write a teacher recommendation letter for the Common App teacher evaluation: 16 rating rows, two questions and a 1,000-word cap, quoted.
Teacher Recommendation Letter for Common App: How to Write the Teacher Evaluation
This page is for the teacher who said yes. A student invited you through the Common App, and the recommender system is asking for a teacher evaluation. Your teacher recommendation letter is one of its four parts:
- A ratings grid. Sixteen rows, each rated against "other students in their class", with a "No basis" option.
- Two short questions. How long and in what context you have known the student, and the first words that come to mind.
- A course list. The courses you taught the student, with their level.
- The letter. Common App calls it "a short evaluation (1000 words or less) that will help colleges differentiate this student from others."
The same teacher recommendation letter goes to every college the student applies to. Every rule and prompt below is quoted from Common App's own form and help pages, or from the colleges named, as read on October 28, 2026. Where we give advice of our own, we say so.
What the Teacher Evaluation Form Asks, Field by Field
Common App publishes a PDF version of the form, linked from its recommender help center. The current file is dated July 2026, and its questions match the 2025–26 version word for word. Its teacher section opens with the purpose of the form:
"The teacher recommendation lets you share unique insights about your student from the vantage point of the classroom. They can provide a view of an applicant’s intellectual curiosity, creative thought, and work habits. Keep in mind that not every college requires a teacher recommendation."
| Part of the form | Exact wording on the form | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Your role | "Please indicate if you are a high school/secondary school teacher or a college/university instructor." | Dual-enrollment and college instructors can complete it (see below) |
| Subject | "Subject area" | Common App assigns teachers to "Computer Science, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, World Language, Other" |
| Ratings | "Compared to other students in their class, how do you rate this student in terms of:" | The comparison group is the student's class, not your whole career, except in the top column |
| Context question | "How long have you known this student and in what context?" | A factual answer: years, courses, roles |
| First words | "What are the first words that come to your mind to describe this student?" | A few words, read before the letter |
| Courses | "Please attach a list of the courses in which you have taught this student, including the level of course difficulty (AP, IB, accelerated, Cambridge, honors, elective; 100-level, 200-level, etc.)." | Names and levels, so the letter does not have to list them |
| The letter | "Please attach a short evaluation (1000 words or less) that will help colleges differentiate this student from others. We especially welcome a broad-based assessment and encourage you to consider describing or addressing what you think is important about this student, including a description of academic and personal characteristics, as demonstrated in your classroom." | The 1,000 words are a cap, not a target |
The ratings grid
The grid has eight columns: "No basis", "Below average", "Average", "Good (above average)", "Very good (well above average)", "Excellent (top 10%)", "Outstanding (top 5%)" and "One of the top few encountered in my career".
It has sixteen rows: "Academic achievements", "Intellectual promise", "Quality of writing", "Creative thought", "Productive discussion", "Faculty respect", "Disciplined habits", "Maturity", "Motivation", "Leadership", "Integrity", "Reaction to setbacks", "Concern for others", "Self confidence", "Initiative" and "Overall".
Common App's help center says the online evaluation includes the letter and details about you and your relationship with the student, and that "If applicable, this will also include academic ratings for the student." So you may not see the grid for every student. When you do, two points of our own:
- Use "No basis" honestly. If you taught the student one semester of chemistry, you may have no basis for "Leadership". A guessed "Excellent" in a row the letter never mentions is a claim nobody can check.
- Make the grid and the letter agree. Both reach the college in the same evaluation. If you mark "Overall" as "One of the top few encountered in my career", the letter should say so and show why. If the letter says the student is your best in years and the grid says "Very good", one of them is wrong.
One Letter Goes to Every College
It is tempting to write for the college a student talks about most. The Common App system does not work that way. Its help center says:
"Teachers will only submit one, general, letter of recommendation per-student regardless of how many institutions the student is applying to."
And on whether to tailor it:
"Your online letter of recommendation or evaluation goes to each school to which the student submits, so we recommend that you not personalize your letter."
In practice, leave college names out of the letter, and write "colleges" or "your institution" rather than "Yale" or "your engineering program". A line written for one college is read by all of them.
Colleges also decide how many teacher letters they want. Common App says "Each college determines the number of required and allowed teacher evaluations." Three examples, each in the college's own words:
| College | What it says about teacher letters |
|---|---|
| Yale | "All applicants for first-year admission should request two letters of recommendation from teachers who have taught the student in core academic subjects: usually Math, English, Foreign Language, Social Studies, or Science." |
| Northwestern | "Northwestern requires one Teacher Evaluation." It adds: "Recommendations are also accepted via email if sent from the recommender's email address." |
| Purdue | "A recommendation from a school counselor or other school official is not an admission requirement." It accepts "a total of two recommendations from applicants which may include one counselor recommendation, one teacher recommendation, or one non-academic recommendation (coach, clergy, etc.) if applicants choose to provide them." |
Northwestern's and Purdue's statements are college-specific articles in Common App's recommender help center. Yale's is on its admissions site.
What Colleges Say They Use the Letter For
Common App's September 2026 writing guide for counselors and teachers defines the teacher's job in one sentence:
"Teachers write from the vantage point of the classroom, using their firsthand knowledge of a student’s intellectual curiosity, creative thought, quality of writing, class behavior, and work habits to depict the student as a scholar."
The guide then sets the teacher's material against the counselor's, trait by trait. These are its teacher entries, verbatim:
| Trait | What Common App suggests a teacher can show |
|---|---|
| Leadership | "Examples from the classroom, such as leadership during class discussions and with group projects and assignments" |
| Academic achievement | "Insights about classroom performance and approaches to specific projects and assignments" |
| Growth | "Growth over the course of the class, or since the last time the teacher taught the student, including the willingness to be challenged and learning from the experience" |
| Engagement | "Class participation, contributions to discussions, desire to engage with the learning process beyond what’s expected of the class" |
| Resilience | "Reaction to academic setbacks such as failing a test or not understanding a concept" |
| Character | "Willingness to assist other students" |
The counselor covers the whole school and the transcript's context; our guide to the Common App counselor recommendation shows those forms. Your letter does not need to repeat them.
Two colleges put the same idea in their own words. Yale: "A string of generic superlatives is not as useful as a specific, thoughtful discussion of your strengths." MIT, in its guidance for teachers and counselors writing for MIT applicants: "Both school counselor and teacher recommendations are most helpful when they are specific and storied." MIT also lists questions it hopes letters answer, including "Has the applicant ever experienced disappointment or failure? If so, how did they react?" And it adds a line worth keeping if you barely know the student: "If you do not know the applicant well and are only able to write a brief summary, please acknowledge this."
How to Build the Letter: Evidence by Type
Common App's own tips for recommenders put it in four words: "Anecdotes outshine adjectives. Always." The structure below is our suggestion for meeting that standard. Each part maps to one of the official prompts above.
- Open with your vantage point. One or two sentences: what you taught the student, when, and in what setting. The form's context question collects the facts; the letter's opening tells the reader how close your view was.
- Give one classroom incident in detail. Pick a moment where the student's own action is visible: a question that changed a discussion, a lab that went wrong, a draft they rebuilt. This answers the writing guide's "approaches to specific projects and assignments".
- Compare, and name the group. The grid compares the student with "other students in their class". In the letter you can widen the frame if it is true. Common App's tips say: "If this is one of the best students you’ve taught, supervised, or coached in a 25-year career, say so." Name the group and its size if you can, and make it match your grid.
- Show growth you watched. The writing guide's growth entry covers change "over the course of the class, or since the last time the teacher taught the student". A before and after, with what the student did in between, is evidence no other part of the file can supply.
- Show the student's effect on the room. Discussions, group work, the classmate they helped. This is the writing guide's "Willingness to assist other students".
- Be candid. Common App's tips: "Colleges value candor, not perfection." One honest limit, with what the student is doing about it, makes the praise around it more credible.
Skip what colleges already have. Common App's tips say: "Colleges don’t need a recap of things they will read in the application." The course list covers your courses; the transcript covers grades.
A constructed example paragraph
The paragraph below is a constructed example, written by us. It is not a real letter, and the student and the numbers are invented to show the structure. Do not copy it: Common App's tips say "Form letters are convenient but counterproductive."
Constructed example. "I taught Maya in AP Chemistry this past year, a class of 28 juniors and seniors. In October her lab group's titration results came out 12% off, and the group wanted to write it up as experimental error. Maya asked for ten minutes after class, re-ran the calculation with the class, and found that the group had used the wrong molarity for the base. She then asked if she could explain the mistake to the class the next day, because, as she put it, 'three other groups used the same bottle.' She was right. In five years of teaching this course, I can count on one hand the students who would rather find their own error than defend a result. She is not yet a confident writer; her first lab reports were lists of numbers. By spring, her conclusions argued from the data, and two classmates were asking her to read their drafts."
How the paragraph maps to the prompts:
- Vantage point: course, year and class size, in the first sentence.
- Incident: a specific lab, what went wrong, and what Maya did.
- Effect on the room: her explanation to the class, and classmates asking for her help.
- Comparison: "five years of teaching this course". That career-wide comparison supports the top column, "One of the top few encountered in my career", in a row such as "Initiative" only if it is true; the other columns compare Maya with this class of 28.
- Candor and growth: "not yet a confident writer", followed by the change from fall to spring.
The "first words" box
The form asks for "the first words that come to your mind to describe this student". Our suggestion: choose words the letter then proves. If you write "relentlessly curious", the letter should contain the moment that showed it.
Length
The form sets the limit: "a short evaluation (1000 words or less)". It does not set a minimum. Our guide to how long a letter of recommendation should be compares the typical length of a Common App teacher letter with graduate, medical and UK letters.
Timing and Deadlines
The Common App pages we read give no single date for teacher letters. The recommender system lets teachers "Track deadlines for requests and form submissions", and colleges' deadlines differ, so check the deadlines shown there for each student.
Common App tells students: "You should ask for a letter of recommendation at least three weeks in advance of a deadline." If a student asks later than that, you can decide whether you can still write a letter you would stand behind.
Colleges differ on late letters. Yale, for example, says "The admissions office makes reasonable allowances for late school documents in situations where it is not possible for teachers and counselors to meet the application deadlines." Do not assume every college says the same.
Who Can Write It, and the FERPA Waiver
Who the form is for. The form tells the student to "send this form to a teacher who has taught you an academic subject (for example, English, computer science, math, science, social studies, or world language)." If you teach an arts subject, Common App lists "Arts Teacher" among its other recommender types. If you are a college instructor (for example, in dual enrollment), Common App's help center says: "The Teacher Evaluation form is meant to be completed by high school teachers, but if you are a college professor and were invited to complete the form, you can still do so."
The FERPA waiver. The student, not you, decides whether to waive the right to see your letter. Common App explains the waiver to students this way: "Waiving your right lets colleges know that you do not intend to read your recommendations, which helps reassure colleges that the letters are candid and truthful." It also tells them: "Some recommenders may decline to write a letter for you if you do not waive your rights." So if that is your policy, tell students before they invite you.
The decision locks early. Students can change it "up to the point your first recommender submits a school form on your behalf or up to the point that you submit your first application." For a student who does not waive, Common App's help center says: "after you matriculate you will have access to the recommendation form and all other recommendations and supporting documents submitted by you and on your behalf after matriculating, unless at least one of the following is true:"
- "The institution does not save recommendations post-matriculation (you can check if a school saves recommendations post-matriculation in the My colleges section)."
- "You waive your right to access, regardless of the institution to which it is sent."
Our suggestion: write as if a student who did not waive could one day read the letter.
Saying no. Common App's tips say "It’s okay to say no", and suggest helping the student find a recommender who might be a better fit.
What Common App's Rules Say About the Letter Itself
Common App's fraud policy lists "Submitting fabricated or materially misleading letters of recommendation" among its examples of fraud. The policy defines the users it covers to include teachers: "Registered Users may include, for example, first-year or transfer student applicants (or their parent or guardian, as applicable), counselors, teachers, advisors, or other professionals who work with applicants."
The same list of examples includes "Submitting plagiarized essays or other written or oral material, or intentionally misrepresenting as one’s own original work: (1) another person’s thoughts, language, ideas, expressions, or experiences or (2) the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology, or algorithm". The policy does not say how this clause applies to a recommender's letter, and none of the Common App recommender pages we read for this guide (listed under Sources) address AI use by recommenders directly. Follow Common App's policy and any rule your school or district sets. For what is known about teachers' AI use, see our pages on teachers using ChatGPT for college recommendation letters and on why readers notice AI-written letters.
Before You Submit
- The opening says what you taught the student, when, and in what setting.
- At least one incident shows the student acting, not just a trait named.
- Any comparison names its group, and the grid says the same thing as the letter.
- Growth is shown with a before and an after.
- No college is named, because the same letter goes to all of them.
- Grades and course names are left to the transcript and the course list.
- The letter is 1,000 words or fewer.
- Your "first words" are words the letter proves.
If the student gave you Common App's teacher brag sheet, check whether its answers point to an incident you remember. It asks students to "Describe a project you worked on in the class that you are proud of" and "What is something your teacher probably doesn’t know about you?"
Writing for a graduate applicant instead? The master's and PhD recommendation letter format and sample covers that letter's structure and upload rules.
Get a Free Review of Your Teacher Recommendation Letter
Get a free Quick Review of your teacher recommendation letter against GradPilot's Common App teacher letter rubric. It reads for how you know the student, anecdotes rather than adjectives, growth you watched happen, and what the student adds to the room.
If you are writing for a graduate program instead, see our guide to how to write a grad school letter of recommendation.
Sources
Retrieved October 28, 2026.
- Common App, Teacher evaluation (PDF, 2026), linked from Can I get paper or PDF versions of the application and recommender forms?
- Common App Recommender Solutions Center: Recommendation Forms; May I personalize a recommendation for my student?; I was invited as a Teacher, but I am a college professor; What is the FERPA Waiver?; How can I change my FERPA decision?; What happens if I don't waive my FERPA rights?
- Northwestern, Teacher Evaluation, and Purdue, Recommendations and Teacher Evaluations, in the Common App Recommender Solutions Center
- Common App, Recommender guide: Writing guide for counselors and teachers (PDF, September 2026); Writing effective letters of recommendation (PDF, September 2026); Teacher brag sheet (PDF, September 2026)
- Common App, Understanding the recommendation process (PDF); Recommender system; Fraud policy
- Yale Undergraduate Admissions, Recommendation Letters
- MIT Admissions, How to write good letters of recommendation
Does your letter show what you saw in class?
Teachers: check your letter for classroom examples, growth you saw and the student's impact.