Why boarding school students might want to look beyond the classroom when choosing an additional college recommender.

Anyone who knows me knows there are two things I can spend far too much time talking about: art and sports.

I love walking through an art museum and getting close enough to a painting that the image almost disappears. From across the room, you see the finished work. Up close, you see individual brushstrokes, layers of paint, imperfections, texture, and colors you never noticed from twenty feet away.

Sports fascinate me for almost the opposite reason.

A box score gives you numbers.

Points.

Goals.

Assists.

Fairways hit.

Birdies.

Wins and losses.

But anyone who loves sports knows the box score never tells you the entire story.

It doesn’t tell you about the basketball player who dove for a loose ball with two minutes left.

It doesn’t tell you about the golfer who made double bogey and responded with three straight pars.

It doesn’t tell you about the senior captain who stayed after practice with a struggling freshman.

Those moments tell you something the statistics cannot.

And as seniors across boarding schools begin college applications, I keep thinking that we might be approaching recommendation letters the same way.

A college application is part painting and part box score.

The transcript gives admissions officers the statistics.

Your essays add your voice.

Your activities show where you spent your time.

Your teacher recommendations add another layer.

Your counselor provides context around the entire experience.

Together, those pieces begin creating a portrait.

But boarding school students have something most applicants do not.

There may be an adult who has watched you when there was no grade, scoreboard, or audience.

Your dorm parent.

And if a college allows an additional recommender, perhaps the question shouldn’t simply be:

Who will write me the strongest recommendation?

Maybe it should be:

Who knows the student my transcript can’t introduce?

First, I’m Not Telling You to Replace Your Teacher

Before college counselors across the boarding school world start emailing me, let’s make something very clear.

Colleges have different recommendation requirements. Some require recommendations from classroom teachers. Counselors have their own important role in providing context around a student’s academic and school experience.

Follow the requirements of the colleges where you are applying.

And listen to your college counselor.

This is not an argument for replacing those recommendations.

It is an argument for thinking differently when a college allows an additional or other recommender.

Because if your application is a painting, every additional brushstroke should contribute something to the portrait.

And if your application is a sports résumé, you probably don’t need three people reading the same box score.

You need someone who saw the plays that never appeared in it.

Your Transcript Is the Box Score

I love sports statistics.

They matter.

If a golfer shoots 68, they played some pretty good golf.

If a basketball player scores 30 points, something went right.

The numbers tell us something real.

But nobody who understands sports would argue that numbers tell us everything about an athlete.

The same should be true when we look at students.

Your transcript matters.

It demonstrates achievement, consistency, rigor, and academic performance.

But it cannot tell an admissions officer everything about the person whose name appears at the top.

A 3.8 GPA cannot explain how you handled your roommate conflict.

An A in English doesn’t tell someone whether younger students trust you.

Your SAT or ACT score cannot show what happened when you experienced your first real failure away from home.

And your class rank certainly cannot explain whether you are the person who notices when someone is sitting alone at dinner.

Those moments aren’t in the box score.

But they count.

Your Dorm Parent May Know the Film

Coaches understand something statistics cannot capture.

Film.

You watch the game.

You notice positioning.

Effort.

Communication.

Body language.

Decision-making.

The player who makes everyone around them better.

The person who keeps competing when the game isn’t going their way.

Your dorm parent has essentially been watching a different kind of film.

They have seen what happens after the formal school day ends.

They may know that you’re the senior who notices when a freshman seems homesick.

They know how you handled your first real roommate disagreement.

They know whether you help clean the common room when nobody asks.

They have watched you walk through the door after losing the championship game.

Getting cut from something.

Bombing a test.

Going through a breakup.

Having a difficult conversation with your parents.

They may remember when you were the homesick ninth grader calling home every night.

And three years later, they may have watched you sit beside another new student going through exactly the same thing.

That’s growth.

There isn’t a statistic for it.

But someone witnessed it.

Then There Is the Painting

This is where my art brain takes over.

Imagine your college application hanging on the wall of a gallery.

Step back.

What portrait does it paint?

Your transcript creates structure.

Your activities add movement.

Your essays introduce your voice.

Your teacher recommendations provide texture.

Your counselor adds context around the canvas.

Each piece adds another layer.

But great paintings aren’t created by repeatedly using the exact same color.

Contrast matters.

Depth matters.

Small details matter.

Sometimes the brushstroke you barely notice is the one that makes the entire composition work.

So if a college allows you to submit another recommendation, step back from the canvas and ask:

What color is missing?

If two teachers have already described your intellectual curiosity, do you need another person saying you’re intellectually curious?

If your counselor has explained your leadership positions, does another letter listing those positions make the portrait clearer?

Maybe the missing color is different.

Who are you when nobody is grading you?

How do you respond when things don’t go your way?

How do you treat people who cannot do anything for you?

Who were you when you arrived at boarding school?

Who are you now?

Those might be the brushstrokes your dorm parent can provide.

Boarding Schools Have Classrooms Without Desks

This is where I think the conversation goes beyond college recommendations.

Boarding schools constantly talk about educating the whole student.

Independence.

Responsibility.

Leadership.

Resilience.

Self-advocacy.

Conflict resolution.

Community.

Belonging.

If we genuinely believe those are educational outcomes, then we also need to recognize the adults who witness that education happening.

Dorm parents aren’t simply supervising buildings.

At their best, they are educators working in classrooms without desks.

Their classrooms have couches.

Laundry machines.

Microwaves.

Late-night snacks.

Roommate disagreements.

Homesick phone calls.

And, occasionally, a trash can that everyone in the dorm has somehow collectively decided they cannot see.

There is no homework assignment for being a good roommate.

There is no extra credit for checking on someone.

Nobody adds five points to your GPA because you apologized after an argument.

There isn’t an AP exam for becoming independent.

But learning is happening.

Your dorm parent may have had a front-row seat.

Choose the Person With Stories, Not the Biggest Title

College application season can make students think strategically about everything.

Sometimes too strategically.

You may think:

The Head of School knows me.

The Dean knows my name.

This administrator has an impressive title.

Surely that will look good.

Maybe.

But here’s the question I would ask:

Can that person tell a story about you?

Not describe you.

Tell a story.

There’s a difference.

Imagine reading:

“Andrew is a responsible and engaged member of our community.”

Fine.

Now imagine reading:

“I watched Andrew notice that a new boarding student was struggling during their first month. Nobody assigned him to help. He simply started inviting that student to dinner.”

Now you can picture the student.

That’s the difference between listing statistics and watching film.

It’s the difference between describing the colors and seeing the painting.

Choose the person who knows the stories.

Not necessarily the person with the title.

The Best Additional Recommendation Adds a New Color

More recommendations do not automatically mean a stronger application.

Any artist knows there comes a point when adding more paint doesn’t improve the piece.

Sometimes it muddies it.

If three adults essentially write the same recommendation, an admissions officer isn’t necessarily learning more about you.

They’re seeing the same color layered three times.

A great additional recommendation should make someone stop and think:

I didn’t know that about this student.

A dorm parent might speak about your independence.

Your resilience.

How you navigate conflict.

Your influence on younger students.

How you contribute when nobody is watching.

The way you’ve matured.

How you treat people during ordinary moments.

Those qualities are difficult to quantify.

They’re also exactly the qualities that eventually shape college communities.

Juniors, Please Don’t Start Campaigning

If you’re a junior reading this, please don’t immediately walk downstairs and start being suspiciously nice to your dorm parent.

Please.

Do not suddenly volunteer to take the trash out every night because you read a Beyond the Bell article and realized this person might write you a recommendation next year.

People can tell.

Instead, build genuine relationships with the adults around you.

Talk to your dorm parents.

Spend some time in the common room.

Let your advisor know when something is difficult.

Get to know your coaches and activity leaders beyond what they can do for you.

Allow people to see your growth.

Not because you need a recommendation.

Because one of the great privileges of boarding school is being surrounded by adults who can know you beyond a 50-minute class period.

When next fall arrives, the person who can tell your story may already be obvious.

College Counseling and Residential Life Need Each Other

There’s an institutional question here too.

If boarding schools claim residential life is part of their educational advantage, then the stories emerging from residence halls should not exist completely separately from the college counseling process.

Who has quietly become a leader in their dorm?

Which senior consistently looks after younger students?

Who arrived unable to advocate for themselves and now handles difficult conversations independently?

Who has experienced enormous personal growth that would never appear on a transcript?

College counselors cannot see everything.

Teachers cannot see everything.

Dorm parents cannot see everything.

That’s the point.

Each person sees a different part of the canvas.

I’m not suggesting every dorm parent suddenly start writing twenty college recommendations.

Residential life professionals, you can put the pitchforks down.

I’m suggesting that the adults holding different pieces of a student’s story should probably talk to each other more often.

Are We Showing Colleges the Whole Student?

This is the question I keep returning to.

Boarding schools proudly tell families that education here is about more than academics.

Then college application season arrives, and sometimes we reduce students back to academics.

The irony shouldn’t escape us.

If residential education matters, the growth happening there matters too.

That doesn’t mean every student needs a dorm-parent recommendation.

They don’t.

It might mean stronger communication between residential life and college counseling.

It might mean helping students recognize residential leadership they never considered “leadership.”

It might simply mean asking students to think more deeply about who has witnessed their growth.

Because the goal shouldn’t be to manufacture another credential.

The goal should be to show the whole person.

Parents, Ask a Different Question

Parents, as college applications begin taking over dinner conversations, FaceTime calls, Sunday evenings, and probably everyone’s stress levels, try asking your child something different.

Don’t start with:

“Who’s your best teacher?”

Or:

“Who will write the strongest letter?”

Ask:

“Which adult at school knows who you’ve become?”

Then listen.

Maybe it’s a teacher.

Maybe it’s a coach.

Maybe it’s an advisor.

And at a boarding school, it might be the person who has watched your child walk through the dorm doors every night for three years.

Beyond the Bell

Maybe this entire idea works because art and sports teach us essentially the same lesson in completely different ways.

The final product never tells the whole story.

A painting viewed from across the gallery doesn’t reveal every brushstroke.

A box score doesn’t reveal every play.

And a college application cannot possibly reveal every moment that shaped a teenager over four years.

That’s where people matter.

The adults who witnessed the brushstrokes.

The coaches who watched the film.

The dorm parents who saw the moments that never made the highlight reel.

College applications ask young people to compress years of growth into a transcript, an activities list, a few essays, and a handful of recommendations.

But students are bigger than applications.

Boarding school students especially live an enormous part of their education after the final bell rings.

They learn independence because their parents aren’t down the hallway.

They learn community because they cannot simply go home when relationships become complicated.

They learn resilience because even after a terrible night, tomorrow morning they still have to walk into breakfast.

And somewhere between move-in day and graduation, a campus full of strangers starts feeling like home.

So, seniors, follow the requirements.

Listen to your college counselor.

Ask teachers who genuinely know you.

But if a college gives you the opportunity to choose an additional recommender, don’t automatically reach for the adult with the biggest title.

Think like an athlete for a moment.

Who watched the plays that never made the box score?

Then think like an artist.

Step back from the canvas. What color is still missing?

And finally, ask the question that matters most:

Who knows the student my transcript can’t introduce?

At a boarding school, that person may have been watching the painting develop, and the game unfold all along.

They might even be the one reminding you that dorm check-in is in five minutes.