<p>At page263 she talks about how she wrote 4 recommendation letters then let the teachers sign them. Page265 is a recommendation letter she wrote for math teacher.
She also talked about the advantages she have when writing recs herself, i.e., write the same important personal qualities about herself in different recs, and write different positive little stories about herself.</p>
<p>Anyone thinks wirting recs for yourself is cheating?</p>
<p>I had a boss ask me to do it once when I asked him for a recommendation. I was a better writer, I didn’t mind. He read it and approved before signing it. If the teachers agree with the content, then I don’t think it is cheating, at least on the part of the students. Not so sure about the teachers… but many teachers ask students to fill out questionnaires on their accomplishments, goals, etc, then the teachers use those to write letters. It isn’t so different. Now if she forged their signatures, THAT would be cheating.</p>
<p>An essential element that needs to be taken into account is a teacher(s) or anyone asking the student to craft the letter is testament to what the person thinks about the student’s character. Only teachers who trust and hold the student in highest regard would ask the student to do this.</p>
<p>Similar to @intparent, I have had employees ask me to write a recommendation for them - for business school, another job for which there were none similar available in our company etc. For the very top people (and only the very top people), I ask them what do they need from me because each school or job has different qualifications and expectations. I have asked several to write me a detailed outline and to let me know which qualities they would like me to accentuate. </p>
<p>My goal is to maximize the help I give such superior people, BUT I have no time to investigate what the people asking for the recommendation are looking for. However, I would never use or sign anything of which I did not fully approve and could not back up with direct personal examples. And in the cases where the receiver of the recommendation calls, I have no issue discussing everything in exhausting detail, as required.</p>
<p>In short, it is one heck of a compliment and vote of confidence to be allowed to do as much.</p>
<p>Lots of HS college counseling offices ask students to fill out a “brag sheet” that is used by the GC to essentially cut and paste to create a rec.</p>
<p>You think the POTUS writes his own speeches? He just approves what others have written.</p>
<p>It’s not cheating on her part, but if I were Princeton, I might think twice about any future applications from her HS and take any recommendation letters with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>In employment, everyone knows that due to liability, recommendation letters are pretty much worthless. Anyone who doesn’t want to get sued ever writes anything negative on advice of their lawyers, even if it’s true.</p>
<p>And what if the student lived up to exactly what the letters said and other students from that school do the same? What matters is if the letters are truthful and accurate, not who organized them.</p>
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<p>That is one reason, but the other is no one I know agrees to write a letter unless it is going to be positive. I have yet to a see a negative letter - not one in decades. Positive really is not the issue anyway; it is the details re the person’s qualities, which I key in on.</p>
<p>Makes no difference whether the student did everything or not, that’s missing the point. Rec letters are supposed to be personal and a reflection of the recommender about the students in question, not a ghostwritten list of accomplishments and attributes that the teacher just signs off on. How is a student supposed to know what’s inside a teacher’s head anyway? If I were an adcom, I’d start to question everything about that school, including whether its grades had any meaning as well.</p>
<p>If colleges don’t care who wrote the recs then why do they still request recommadation letters?
Colleges should just drop the recommdation letter requirement if they really don’t care.
Looks like they care.</p>
<p>However, use of recommendations also means that the quality of the recommender’s letter writing can have a significant influence on the student’s admission chances, independent of the quality of the student’s actual achievements and qualifications. A student may assume that the teacher whose course that s/he did the best in will write the best recommendation, but that is not necessarily true.</p>
<p>It seems to me that you’d have to be pretty gutsy to write the sort of things that you really hope a recommender will write (i.e., “one of the finest students I’ve encountered in my career”).</p>
From your other post it appears you work in the business field, not education. Teachers can and do write negative letters. Just a few weeks ago in this forum some kid posted about being caught cheating in class by a teacher who they wanted to ask for a rec; teacher said he’d have to mention the cheating in his letter and suggested the kid ask someone else (kid was asking if this teacher should be used to write a letter anyway, believe it or not).</p>
<p>In “The Gatekeepers”,in which a NY Times reporter followed the admissions committee at Wesleyan for a year, is a real-world example of a bad rec. Obviously when the student asked for a rec she assumed it would be positive, but here is what she got:
<p>I asked my unit’s Commander (I was a civilian contractor) to write one of my LoRs for law school. He agreed but then nothing happened. So I then wrote a sample outline letter, talking about his direct experience with my work and accomplishments, and suggested he look at it as an example of how he might organize his letter when he wrote it, and as some of the things I understood the schools to be looking for. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this, he still (eventually) wrote the LoR on his own and it helped me get into a top school (a major reach for me).</p>
<p>Anyone can do this and it is perfectly legal and ethical. Writing the letter yourself and asking someone to sign their name to what you wrote is ethically suspect, even if they 100% agree with the contents.</p>
<p>“I think writing a bad recommendation letter, rather than declining, is much worse than signing a letter ghostwritten by the student.” </p>
<p>I think the burden is entirely on the student to wisely choose the teacher writing the recommendation. </p>
<p>When I’m requesting a LoR I not only assume the letter will frankly discuss my weaknesses as well as my strengths, I hope for it. I think that one of the ways I most show my character is in how I apply myself to my weaknesses. </p>
<p>The bad recommendation above seems to have happened because the student failed to consider the question “How have I applied myself in this class? What kind of work ethic has the instructor seen? What sort of person have I demonstrated myself to be?” </p>
<p>She probably thought, “That class was pretty boring, but I got a 99…I should definitely get a good recommendation.”</p>
<p>Didn’t a lot of people on CC say that if colleges catch you lying on your app you will get kick out of school?
Isn’t writing recommendation letter for yourself is considered lying? And wrote 4 recs? My god.</p>
<p>Many are describing a student who helps with his own rec, as dishonest, lying, etc., with similar reaction towards the teacher. I see one issue here, being the driving focus behind these negative reactions: authorship versus truthfulness and accuracy. </p>
<p>For many posters, there is a reflexive deduction that authorship is the equivalent of truthfulness and accuracy. I posit they are not the same, and that it is the latter that is the underlying foundation of a recommendation.</p>
<p>The question I see few asking is this one, “Is a letter a lie if: 1) it 100% represents what the signer would say and in the way the signer would say it, 2) the signer agrees with very word, 3) it fully represents the relationship between teacher and student, 4) each account and descriptor therein actually happened in the way it says it did, and 5) it truthfully represents the student, as a person?” My take is it is not a lie and is not dishonest if these five parameters are satisfied and signatory stands behind every word.</p>
<p>I also think people are taking the extreme case when the actual process is somewhere in between. I highly suspect most teachers do change the the outlined recs or written recs to fit their style and vocabulary usage simply because the student writes so many other pieces of info in the application that the student’s voice would be easy to pick up. This though is secondary to the parameters mentioned in the paragraph above. </p>