Sample only. Ms. Carla Jiménez, the AP Biology teacher from our
Syllabus sample, asked The Letter! Desk for a Common App teacher evaluation for
Jordan Vega, a fictional student invented for this sample, the same student whose enzyme-lab answer is scored in our
Rubric sample. Here is an excerpt of the draft and the coaching read it produced for her to make her own.
The letter (excerpt)
A teacher evaluation for Jordan Vega
Teacher letter
Known about two years
612 words · target ~1000
Dear Admissions Committee,
I have taught AP Biology for eleven years, and I have known Jordan Vega for two of them: first as a student in my most demanding course, then as the lab assistant who kept showing up after the semester ended. The claim I want to make in this letter is a specific one: when the equipment fails, Jordan starts inventing.
From her answers:
Your role
How long
The headline
In October our spectrophotometer died the morning of a pigment lab. Most students waited for instructions. Jordan taped a phone flashlight to a cardboard box, calibrated it against known samples, and had a working substitute before I had finished writing the apology on the board. The data was rougher than the real instrument's, and Jordan's write-up said so plainly, then argued for exactly how much of the conclusion survived the noise. I now keep that write-up as my model for honest error analysis.
From her answers:
The moment
What changed
Jordan is also a genuine team player: in the spring, three students who had failed the enzyme unit quietly started passing quizzes again, and it took me two weeks to trace it to the review table Jordan ran before school without telling anyone.
From her answers:
Second story
… the excerpt ends here; the full draft runs four more paragraphs and closes with the calibration Carla gave it, word for word.
The desk read (excerpt)
The draft, graded honestly
Every draft ships with a five-dimension read (specificity, evidence, relationship, distinctiveness, tone), each judged with a verbatim quote from the letter itself. Two of the five:
Specificity Strong
The spectrophotometer story does what adjectives cannot: it shows the reader a specific morning and lets them draw the conclusion.
“taped a phone flashlight to a cardboard box, calibrated it against known samples”
Distinctiveness Developing
The opening claim is sharp, but the third paragraph drifts toward language that could describe any helpful student. The flagged phrase below is the fix.
“Jordan is also a genuine team player”
Generic phrases to replace
“team player”: a résumé phrase, not an observation; it could describe anyone who wasn't a problem. The upgrade: the review-table story already shows it, so cut the label and let the moment carry the claim.
Questions that would make this stronger
- What did Jordan say when you finally asked about the review table? A line of dialogue would anchor the second story.
- How does Jordan compare with other lab assistants you have had? The letter currently makes no ranking claim because the calibration question was skipped.
How this sample was made
Built only from the recommender's answers
Carla answered the guided interview, one question at a time, each asking for a moment rather than a trait. The desk drafted the letter from those answers alone: every paragraph cites its sources, the one stock phrase that slipped through got flagged, and the skipped calibration question meant the draft made no comparison claims at all.
She then applied one plain-language revision ("shorter, and lead with the spectrophotometer"), copied the letter, and signed it as her own. That last part never changes.
Your turn
Draft a letter for your student
Answer the interview and get a grounded draft like this one, with the coaching read included. Free for every signed-in account.
Open The Letter! Desk
