First-year applicants: Letters of recommendation

We require letters of recommendation from two teachers. We recommend one letter from a math or science teacher, and one from a humanities, social science, or language teacher. If available, your school school counselor (or another school official) may also include a letter of recommendation alongside the Secondary School Report (SSR) with official transcript.

Recommendation materials must be sent to MIT directly by your recommenders and can be submitted through the MIT-specific recommendation form, which you can manage through the MIT application portal.

(If you’re a teacher looking for advice and tips on writing a helpful and effective letter, see our guide to writing recommendations.)

Whom to ask

For the two required teacher letters of recommendations, we recommend that one letter be from a math or science teacher, and one from a humanities, social science, or language teacher — although this is not a hard requirement.

You should ask a teacher who has taught you in an academic class in high school. 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.

Your school counselor (or another school official) may send a letter of recommendation alongside the required SSR with official transcript, only if available. If your counselor does not or cannot write letters of recommendation, don’t worry — your application will not be disadvantaged.

We are also able to accept an optional supplemental recommendation that provides different or additional context beyond the two we’ve already requested. Most applicants and most admitted students do not submit any supplemental recommendations.

How to submit letters of recommendation

Recommendation materials must be sent to MIT directly by your recommenders. Materials can be requested and submitted through the MIT application portal:

1. Ask your teachers and school counselor to be your recommenders early, so they have time to prepare their materials.
2. Add your recommenders in the “Recommendations” section of the MIT application at any point before submitting your application.
   

   You must add two recommenders with the “Teacher Recommendation” type and one with the “School Counselor / Secondary School Report” type in order to submit your application. You may add one optional supplemental recommender, which is neither expected nor required.

3. When you add a recommender, we immediately email them a personalized link to an MIT-specific recommendation form in which they can upload their materials. Let your recommenders know to expect this email from MIT Admissions.
   

   Recommenders should complete the MIT recommendation form regardless of how they plan to submit their materials, so that we can match materials to your application. Materials uploaded through the MIT recommendation form are automatically matched to your application. Recommenders can indicate on the form if they will submit materials via other accepted methods such as third-party services⁠01 We accept materials submitted by your school through services such as Naviance, SCOIR, Parchment, Cialfo, and MaiaLearning. or email⁠02 Recommender materials sent via email should be sent as PDF attachments to [email protected], with the applicant’s full name and MIT application reference ID number in the subject line of the email. . Materials sent outside of the MIT recommendation form take longer to process, but your application will not be disadvantaged.

Submit your application by the deadline; you don’t have to wait for your recommenders to submit their materials first. We ask recommenders to submit by the deadline as well, but materials that arrive later are still accepted and attached to your application. You can continue to manage recommenders in your application portal after you apply.