<p>serious question. i have a teacher rec, and its only like a pargraph, and its obviously not saying bad things, but its not saying amazing things. in a pool of teachers saying amazing things in rec, is it worth sending a plain ol good one as an additional rec. it just says i did good on tests and work, strong work ethic, interested in the material. but like nothing about "hes so creative, hes a leader, hes so smart..."</p>
<p>so should i sent it?</p>
<p>If you have the required number of recommendations from other teachers, then no, don’t send it. This one won’t add anything valuable to your file. A reader who takes time to read this as an additional recommendation will have wasted his or her time. In addition, I have heard of places where admissions officers will read only the requested number of letters (or sometimes only one over that number). If they ask for n and you have n+2 sent, they’ll choose n of the n+2 letters and read those. It would be a shame if an admissions officer who was reading only the requested number of letters read that one (because it’s invitingly short) instead of one of your stronger letters.</p>
<p>If you need this letter to make the required number of letters, then this one won’t actually hurt you. It just won’t help you at all. (I suppose you could argue that at really selective institutions, not helping *is *hurting, but that’s kind of splitting hairs.)</p>
<p>^^agree. A rec like that shouldn’t mess up your app, but there’s really no point in sending it as it wastes the time of admissions officers. Plus someone who reads such a rec could assume that you’re unremarkable (and I’m sure that’s wrong ;))</p>