So, the professor in the lab I’ve been working in this summer offered to write me a recommendation. There’s some specific professors that he has worked with that I’d be interested in working with in college, and they are professors at top 20 but not ivy schools. He mentioned the idea of contacting them himself about me, and I was wondering if they could have any input in whether I get in. I would really love to work with these professors, so if they put in a good word for me to admissions, could that have any influence? One of the schools in particular (WashU) is heavy in demonstrated interest and we were hoping this would help considering that I have no way on the application of indicating what aspects of WashU interest me.
Sorry if that was unclear
Letters of recommendation can have significant influence in admissions.
@vonlost I’m wondering more about the professors AT the school I’m applying to. Could those professors have a say?
I am pretty sure that professors at a school can influence whether students get accepted there. I know of several cases where a student got a very strong recommendation from a professor at the school, and in every case the student was accepted (in most cases with financial aid). In most of these cases whether they would have been accepted anyway is not possible for me to know.
In the case of my son’s friend, a Harvard professor wrote a recommendation based on the research he had done with this student. While it didn’t get him into Harvard, it did get him into Stanford and Columbia. So, yes, it works…just not always the way you think.
It is more about what the professor write, and less about who the professor is.