<p>Just wondering
lol i meant 'there'.</p>
<p>I hope so! My school is huge and doesn't have all that many counselors and I've never had the need to go see one. So, of course I've been wondering how a counselor could write a recommendation letter about someone they don't even know... ?</p>
<p>High schools send something called a profile along with your transcript to the colleges you're applying to, so they'll know that your school is big and that your counselors probably won't be able to know you very well. What you do is you try to work with your counselor before senior year (check to see if you're on the right track, check to see that you're meeting graduation requirements), before you ask for a rec, so at least that way they'll know about you. And I also asked my counselor for tips for the interview, I told him about how my college apps were going along. I never really shared any personal info that could be used to impress colleges. My counselor asked that I submit to him basically short descriptions of what activities I do and what I got out of them, what my SAT scores, test scores were, any special accomplishments I had, and I think my counselor basically just copied that stuff all on my rec, even though you could find all the information on the Common App itself, so it didn't really add any new info. My counselor did go into a bit more detail about my volunteer work, though. If you go to a huge school, colleges will know and won't expect as much as if you had gone to a small private school.</p>
<p>University of Texas doesn't require any recommendations (unless you are applying to one of the honors programs). I'm sure there are many public universities that don't.</p>
<p>Neither does the University of Washington.</p>
<p>When my nephew applied to Iowa State three years ago, no recommendations were required, just his ACT scores and HS transcript. I suspect that many public universities have similar policies.</p>
<p>All of the UC's.</p>