<p>Hi,
I am a nationally competitive policy debater, and I got a letter of recommendation from Harvard's debate coach to admissions saying that he wants me on the team. I was just wondering if I will count as recruited, or how much help this will give me?</p>
<p>Also, if debate is my primary extracurricular, and I have put a ton of time into it and won a lot of awards and spent all summers on it, will it hurt me if I haven't really done that many other activities? I've also done community service, but debate is basically my main thing.
Thanks guys!</p>
<p>Top-level achievement in one EC is a much better profile than a laundry list of average accomplishments in many ECs. I have no other comment on the issue of your chances. Good luck in your applications.</p>
<p>I was “recruited” by another one of Harvard’s academic teams (for anonymity’s sake, I’ll leave it at that level of ambiguity). They told me that their recruiting power is far weaker than, say, the football team’s, but that their letter would probably improve my chances. </p>
<p>Which I suppose is right. At this point, I suspect the admissions committee will see the letter, identify you as a prima facie admit, and look to see if anything from your application will keep you out. If the rest of your application is solid, their thoughts probably would be, “The debate team wants him, and I see no reason to deny its request.”</p>
<p>To find out how influential the letter is, it would be helpful to know how many of those letters the coach sends (especially in comparison to how many students are on the team.)</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your help! All I was told is that the coaches write one letter to admissions which details people applying that they want to have join the debate team, and they spend about a paragraph describing each person. I am not sure how many people were mentioned in the letter. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say maybe 5-7? In terms of how many people are on the team, I think it is about 20. Given this information, how influential would you guess the letter is?
Thanks again!</p>
<p>Well, the letter definitely can’t hurt!
How did you get in contact with the coach? That might clue you in to how much his recommendation matters.</p>
<p>Based on how you describe the debate team’s letter, I would say that it certainly helps you, but it is also no hook. Harvard is not going to accept 5-7 kids for the sole purpose of the vitality of a 20 person team. That said, if your application was strong already, and you were already on the edge of admission, it would likely tip you in the right direction.</p>
