References

Starting in 2024, we are no longer requesting recommendation letters as part of the Mathcamp student application. Instead, you will need to include contact information for one or more adults whom we may contact if we need more information on your application. Our primary focus will remain on the materials that you provide: the Qualifying Quiz that you submit, and what you tell us in the About You section of our application. Occasionally, there's something in an application that we'd like to learn more about, and that's when we might contact a reference.

Your mathematical reference

Your mathematical reference should be an adult who has interacted directly with you in a mathematical setting, often a teacher from school or a summer program. They're someone whom we can potentially talk with to get an outside perspective on your application, mathematically and personally. You should talk to this person ahead of time to verify that they're willing to serve as a reference, but please make it clear that they do not need to prepare a letter of recommendation. In fact, they don't have to do anything at all unless we contact them! If we do, we'll have a few direct questions for them that we encourage them to respond to informally, without having to spend the time writing a full polished letter.

Here are some ideas for who might make a good matheamtical reference for you:

• an instructor from another math enrichment program
• your current math teacher, or the instructor from a course you're taking outside school (if this person has gotten to know you as an individual)
• a math teacher you had last year, if they know you better than your current instructor
• the faculty supervisor for a math club you're in, or your math team coach
• an instructor at a Math Circle you attend
• a research mentor (if you have worked with such a person in the last year or two, and they know you well mathematically, this is the person you should list)

If you have attended another mathematics summer program recently (e.g. Hampshire, MathILy, PROMYS, Ross, SUMaC, Texas Honors, MathPath...) that is not centered on competition math, an instructor from your summer experience would be an excellent reference. These instructors have experience that is directly comparable to the kind of work we do with students at Mathcamp, so their perspectives tend to be much more helpful to us than those from classroom teachers or competition coaches. It doesn't have to be the program's director: choose someone with whom you've talked about math!

If you have specific questions about selecting your reference, contact us.

Your school guidance counselor

The second adult we will ask you to list is your guidance counselor at school, or a person in a similar role. If you don't have a guidance counselor whom you work with personally, but your school has an academic counseling office, or college admissions guidance (or similar) office, you can just give us an email address that will reach someone in that office. It's fine if the person doesn't know you personally! Our primary goal in contacting such a reference will be to learn more about your school. And if there's no such person or office in your school, that's fine too -- the application will allow you to indicate that.

Who cannot serve as a reference?

The one hard and fast rule: your reference cannot be a family member. Even if you are homeschooled, and even if you have mathematical mentors in your family, your reference cannot be a relative.

The other important guideline is that a reference should be an adult mentor, not from a peer. For example, if you co-founded a math club with a fellow high school student, you might imagine asking your fellow club leader to serve as your reference, but we would much prefer to have the faculty supervisor for the club available as a reference instead.

What if my reference does not speak English?

We have many international students at Mathcamp, and while we need you to be comfortable interacting mathematically and socially in English (all day, every day!), we do not expect every reference to be fluent in English. We want your reference to be someone who knows you well, both mathematically and personally. If the best person you can think of as a reference is not someone who speaks or writes comfortably in English, we still would want to hear from them, so go ahead and list them as your reference. The References section of the application will have a space where you can mention that they don't speak English and tell us the language they do speak.

If your reference doesn't use email, contact us to discuss your situation.

When I submit my application, will my reference get a confirmation email?

No, your reference will not hear from us when you submit your application; their information is simply on file in our system in case we need it. If we have questions for them, then we will reach out later in the season.

It's April, and my reference hasn't heard from you! What does that mean?

We do not expect to follow up with every reference! Don't read anything into that either way. Relatedly: please don't nag your reference about whether they've heard from Mathcamp or not; they are doing you (and us) a favor by serving as your reference, so let's respect their time. (And again, whether they've heard from us or not doesn't actually give you any inside information about your likelihood of admission, so there's no reason to nudge them anyway.)