How to Fill Out a Brag Sheet Form for Letters of Recommendation

A brag sheet is a questionnaire your counselor or teacher asks you to complete so they can write a specific, detailed recommendation letter instead of generic praise. To fill out a brag sheet for letters of recommendation, gather your academic and activities details first, then answer each prompt with concrete stories tied to the person who will be writing for you. The Common Application publishes separate templates for counselors and teachers, and many high schools distribute their own versions through Naviance or Scoir.¹

Pull Your Materials Together Before You Start

Before opening any template, collect the raw ingredients. Trying to remember hours and dates while writing in the box leads to the vague answers that produce vague letters.

Your cumulative GPA, class rank if your school reports it, and the honors or AP courses you’ve taken.
Every club, sport, job, internship, volunteer commitment, and family responsibility you’ve held since ninth grade, with years, hours per week, and leadership roles noted.
Awards and honors with the name of the award, who granted it, and the date.
Work experience with employer, role, hours per week, and what you actually did (not just the title).
Your current college list and any majors or careers you’re considering. The counselor sheet asks about this directly, along with size and setting preferences.¹

Answering the Counselor Brag Sheet

The counselor version is the longer of the two Common App templates. Your counselor uses it alongside your transcript to complete the School Report that every Common App college requires. A counselor may be writing dozens or hundreds of letters, so this form is often their only window into who you are beyond a GPA.

After the basics (preferred name, pronouns, phone, email), the form asks for three adjectives that describe you, your major activities in and out of school with grade levels and leadership noted, your academic strengths, and the events or people that have shaped you.¹

Two questions carry more weight than the rest. The first asks whether your academic record accurately reflects your ability, with space to explain if it doesn’t. Use this to flag a rough semester caused by illness, a family move, or another disruption your counselor can’t know about unless you say so. The second asks what your counselor probably doesn’t know about you. Surface something genuine here: a hobby, a family responsibility, a passion project that never made the activities list.¹

The template also asks about school size (small, medium, large), setting (urban, suburban, rural), institution type (public, private, HBCU, HSI), and proximity to home. These answers don’t go into the letter itself. They help your counselor advise you and frame the letter for the kinds of schools you’re targeting.

Answering the Teacher Brag Sheet

The teacher version is shorter and tighter. Where the counselor paints a broad portrait, the teacher focuses on your work in a specific classroom.

After the same basics, you’ll list the course or courses you took with that teacher and the grade level. The most important prompt comes next: why you chose this teacher. Your answer here shapes the letter’s angle. If you picked your AP History teacher because her Socratic seminars pushed you to defend ideas under pressure, say exactly that. It gives her a thread to pull.²

You’ll also describe a lesson or unit you enjoyed and a project you’re proud of. Then the template asks you to pick one or two attributes from a list (options include intellectual promise, quality of writing, productive class discussion, reaction to setbacks, and initiative) and share a specific example of when you showed them in class.² “I always worked hard” gives the teacher nothing. “When my lab partner dropped the course mid-semester, I redesigned our research project alone and still presented at the science fair” gives them a story they can retell with authority.

If a Parent Brag Sheet Comes Home

Some high schools send a brag sheet home to parents. The parent version captures a perspective no teacher or counselor has: how a student behaves at home, what drives them, and what the family has navigated together.

Parent sheets typically ask about personality and character traits, strongest subjects, leadership roles, community involvement, and any unusual circumstances that affected a student’s education. A common prompt invites the parent to describe what they would include if they were writing the recommendation letter themselves.³

The most valuable thing a parent can offer is a specific anecdote a counselor would never otherwise hear: the student who taught themselves to cook family dinners after a parent’s surgery, or the one who spent weekends translating documents for non-English-speaking neighbors. Parents should describe the situation, what the student did, and what resulted.

Writing Responses That Actually Help

The biggest mistake students make is writing like they’re filling out a form instead of telling a story. A recommender who receives a list of bullet points produces a letter that reads like a list of bullet points. The goal is to hand them narrative material they can reshape in their own voice.

Use Specific Examples, Not Summaries

For every claim you make about yourself, attach a concrete moment. Briefly set the scene, explain what you needed to accomplish, describe what you did, and state the result. “Organized a campus blood drive that collected 47 units” is more useful than “demonstrated leadership through community service.”

Keep responses tight. The Common App templates don’t set strict character limits on every field, but admissions consultants recommend keeping the overall document to about one page.⁴ Bullet points are fine for activity lists. Reflective questions deserve full sentences.

Tailor Each Sheet to Its Recipient

One of the most damaging shortcuts is handing the same brag sheet to every recommender. When a counselor and two teachers all receive identical material, the three letters echo each other, and admissions officers notice.⁵ Think about what each person is uniquely positioned to say. Your counselor sees the big picture. Your English teacher saw you wrestle with a 20-page research paper. Your chemistry teacher watched you recover from a failed exam. The anecdotes and emphasis should shift accordingly.

Pick Traits That Land

When a sheet asks you to list adjectives or select attributes, choose ones aligned with what admissions committees value in a holistic review. Curiosity, persistence, collaboration, and compassion consistently rank among the qualities that move the needle.⁶ “Hardworking” is fine but forgettable. “The kind of student who reads the footnotes because she wants to know where the author’s argument breaks down” sticks.

Mistakes to Avoid

Listing majors or colleges you’re unsure about. Recommenders latch onto specifics. If your sheet says “pre-med at Johns Hopkins” in March of junior year and you pivot to environmental science by October, your letter can contradict the rest of your application. If you’re undecided, say so and describe the broad interests you want to explore.⁵
Volunteering weaknesses unprompted. If you can frame a challenge as a growth story with a clear resolution, go ahead. If the honest answer might raise red flags with no redemptive arc, skip it or reframe.
Rehashing your activities list. The recommender can already see your extracurriculars on the Common App. The brag sheet’s job is depth and color, not a second roster. Focus on the stories behind one or two activities.⁵
Inconsistent dates or details. If your sheet says you were club president in 11th grade but your activities section says 12th, the discrepancy creates doubt. Cross-check everything against what you’ve entered in your application.

When to Deliver the Sheet

Work backward from your earliest application deadline. A former Stanford assistant dean of admission has recommended giving recommenders a 90-day heads-up, which is more generous than the two-to-four-week minimum many high schools suggest.⁷ Teachers fielding dozens of requests prioritize students who asked early and gave them something substantive.

A workable timeline:

Spring of junior year: ask your recommenders in person and tell them the brag sheet is coming. This is a verbal commitment, not the form itself.
Late spring or early summer: complete and deliver your sheets. Doing this before summer break avoids the September crunch when every senior needs a letter at once.
Early fall of senior year: send a short follow-up confirming your final college list, deadlines, and any changes to your intended major.
After submission: a brief thank-you note, handwritten or emailed, once the letter is uploaded.

Submit through whatever channel your school uses. If your high school runs Naviance or Scoir, there’s usually a built-in survey that routes your answers to the recommender. Otherwise, a clean PDF attachment by email works. Avoid sharing a Google Doc link that might accidentally grant editing access.

A Note on the FERPA Waiver

Filling out a brag sheet and waiving your FERPA rights are separate steps, but they come up at the same time, so it’s worth knowing the difference. When you set up recommenders in the Common App, you’ll be asked whether you waive your right under FERPA to view the letters after you enroll. Waiving signals to colleges that the letters are candid, and some recommenders will decline to write for you if you don’t waive.⁸ FERPA itself governs the privacy of student education records and gives you the right to inspect recommendation letters once you enroll, but only if you haven’t waived that right.⁹ The waiver decision is made once and applies to all your recommenders. Most students waive. If you’re unsure, talk to your counselor before you click.

1
Common App. Student Brag Sheet Template – Counselor
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Common App. Student Brag Sheet Template – Teacher
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CollegeVine Blog. Parent Brag Sheet: How to Fill it Out + Example
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Fastweb. How to Create a Brag Sheet
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Sarah Arberson. The Pitfalls of the Brag Sheet (and How to Avoid Them)
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CollegeData. 9 Personality and Character Traits Colleges Look for in Applicants
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College Essay Guy. How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation for College
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Common App. What is the FERPA Waiver?
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U.S. Department of Education. FERPA – Protecting Student Privacy