<p>So I was ill-informed and accidentally didn't waive my right. I haven't seen any recommendations or had any influence in them, so should I contact my colleges and say that it was a screw-up? How heavy do they look down on someone who didn't waive their right?</p>
<p>It won’t matter that much. I would just keep things the way they are right now.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about this one. Some people don’t waive their rights because they know how long and hard their parents’ generation fought to get those rights. Some people don’t waive their rights because they can’t decide whether or not to, and ultimately forget to check the box. Some people attend high schools where the students are strictly forbidden to waive their rights. </p>
<p>No admissions officer has ever gone on record to say that he/she views waived and unwaived letters of recommendation differently. Until at least one person is willing to make a public statement that specifically states, “I Ms./Mr. Jones of the admissions office of College/UniversityX do not consider unwaived letters to be as valid as waived letters.” there is no reason to waive your rights.</p>
<p>I think if you can go back and waive them (or contact the schools), you’d better do that ASAP. My son has a friend at his boarding school who is doing a PG year and will be going Ivy in his sport. He was supposed to do that last year (highly recruited, National Team high AI, etc.), but checking “No” caused him to not be accepted anywhere.</p>
<p>keylyme, </p>
<p>All the information I’ve been able to find on this topic is along the lines of “my son’s friend’s mother’s neighbor’s kid’s guidance counselor told him/her that he/she heard that XYZ”. If you can get us the names of the admissions counselors who specifically told this young person that the reason why he was not accepted at their institutions was that he had checked “No”, you would be doing everyone a real service. We need hard data here.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I would not post people’s names without their permission. All I have is the anecdotal data as told to us by my son (who is a friend and teammate of this person) and the prep school guidance counselor at my son’s school. He now has a likely letter in hand in this, his PG year. At my son’s school, the kids are told in no uncertain terms to make sure they check “yes”! The GC’s do advise that you could blow a chance at admission if you do not.</p>
<p>Anecdotal still is anecdotal. Would the guidance counselor be willing to address this with me with specific names of specific admissions officers at specific colleges/universities? If so, feel free to have him/her PM me and we can discuss it outside this forum.</p>
<p>I have pressed Happykid’s guidance counselors about this in the past, and NO ONE has been able to produce hard evidence. I’m looking for just ONE admissions officer who is willing to go on record, that’s all.</p>
<p>^ This whole thing doesn’t really matter because I forgot one detail. I heard from other students at my school that you could reset the waiver, but I can’t because one of my teachers sent her recommendation already. My question is how it will affect my admission, if at all.</p>
<p>To address the OP - I would talk with your high school gc and see what s/he recommends. </p>
<p>happymom…I would not be at all comfortable sharing my cc use with my son’s gc. Sorry. I guess you could call and ask a gc or a college admission’s officer, though. I would think they would give you a straight answer.</p>
<p>Summed up—it may or it may not; I don’t think anyone knows. It would be best to contact them and tell them you have not seen anything and would like to waive your rights, just in case. You have nothing to lose.</p>
<p>thanks that sounds like a really good idea</p>
<p>keylyme,</p>
<p>Thanks anyway! This question comes up quite often, and until there is hard evidence, I think the students are left to panic about something that probably isn’t truly panic worthy. </p>
<p>If you ever do have a chance to address this issue with your child’s counselor, please encourage him to encourage the admissions officers to go on record. The only reason I can think of for never going on record are that the admissions officers fear creating an actionable offense by admitting to refusing to read LORs that haven’t been waived under FERPA.</p>