<p>I am an international student planning to apply to Harvard-RD.
My teachers told me that they had talked about all aspects of my academic life as well as my extra-curricular activities and social work. Hence, I expect both the letters of recommendation to be long.</p>
<p>1) Is it good to have exhaustive,but long letters of recommendation or would short ones have sufficed?</p>
<p>2) I read about interviews of writers of letters of recommendation in a post on this sub-forum.
Does this normally occur for international applicants?
I am worried because my teachers are really busy in February and March. They are the coordinators of a lot of activities during the decennial celebration of my school. They also will be involved in examination work.
They might not be able to arrange for a telephone interview,if contacted.( Both my teachers)</p>
<p>Will this negatively affect my application?
Thanks :)</p>
<p>Long letters of recommendation are great, so are short ones. What matters are the details that your teachers mentioned, not the length of the letter. The length of the letter will have absolutely no bearing (positive or negative) on your application. What matters are the specifics – how your teachers rave about your potential as a scholar. See MIT’s website for the specifics colleges are looking for from teacher rec’s: [Writing</a> Recommendations | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs]Writing”>How to write good letters of recommendation | MIT Admissions).</p>
<p>I think colleges will sometimes call a teacher to verify the truthfulness of a letter, and to make sure the teacher wrote it and not the student.</p>