Which teachers should write your recommendation letters?

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office have seen thousands of recommendation letters, and they know which kind moves a file and which kind merely fills a slot. Every year a future biologist faces the same small dilemma. Her biology teacher gave her an A and barely knows her name, while her history teacher watched her argue her way through a semester, read the extra books and stayed after class to talk. Conventional wisdom says the subject should match the major.

The choice feels minor, and it is one of the few places in the application where a student decides who speaks for her, with no chance to revise once the letters are in. The answer starts with reading each college's rules more closely than most families do.