Great recommendation but very poorly written

<p>A lot of circumstances led to my D having access to one of her teacher's recommendations. The recommendation was great but it was so poorly written gramatically that we feel it is unusable. I firmly believe that recommendations should not be read by the student, but in cases like this where a teacher so blatantly disregards the trust a student has shown him/her, I can't help but think I am being naive in that belief. In any event, I'm curious how students and parents would deal/have dealt with similar situations. The most obvious solution is to go direct to the teacher but unfortunately the teacher is unavailable for a re-write so I think our options are:
Trash it and ask another teacher for a recommendation (my concern is that it won't be as good from a content perspective).
Trash it but ask the new teacher to incorporate some of what the original teacher said (difficult since most of the good stuff was specific to work that was done in the original teacher's class).
Edit it and ask someone in the guidance department to re-type it with our edits (hard to justify ethically, but again, am I being naive).
Ask another teacher in the original teacher's department to edit it and re-submit to the guidance department.</p>

<p>Are there other options I am not considering?</p>

<p>This may not be as bad a problem as you think. Many teachers, especially in math and science, do not write well in English. Many times English is their second or third language. Adcoms are not evaluating the writing skills of the teachers (assuming the rec is not from an English teacher). They are trying to determine whether your child is a good fit for their campus. They will generally look past the grammar and evaluate the content of the rec. </p>

<p>A rec that says simply ‘This is one of my best students ever’ can carry just as much weight as a much more flowery one. If it truly is a great rec, I’d definitely have her send it, notwithstanding the grammar flaws and supplement it with one or two others that are also good. </p>

<p>Having it re-written by a stand-in recommender (either another teacher or a GC) is not appropriate. However, your D might ask her GC to expressly support the rec as being very strong despite its flaws and to explain why the teacher wrote so badly, if appropriate. This sort of statement could be included within the rec that the GC will be writing for your D.</p>

<p>If it’s a letter by a math or science teacher, don’t worry. They aren’t known for their flowery, elaborated comments. You should be sure to include a rec from an English teacher, and that better be well written.</p>

<p>What you shouldn’t do is ask for it to be rewritten. If it’s so totally poorly written, you should simply not use it. However, don’t forget to write a thank you note in any case.</p>

<p>Is it possible the teacher made this type of typo you wrote:

where it should say “…go directly to the teacher…”</p>

<p>The content is what matters. I wouldn’t worry about this at all.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure I understand this. What “trust” did the teacher disregard? Were other people allowed to read the letter besides you and your child?</p>

<p>Because I think the only thing a teacher owes the student is a fair recommendaiton, and in this case the recommendation was “great”. I don’t think a teacher commits to writing something to a particular grammatical standard. It might be disappointing to see a poorly written letter, but I don’t see how that is a betrayal of trust.</p>

<p>Thanks for the input.

Yeah, sorry, I guess I should have specified, it was an English teacher. I may re-read it and post some similar examples.</p>

<p>As for the trust that was broken, ask yourself this. If you are interviewing for that one dream job, and you asked a prior boss (or really anyone for that matter) to write a recommendation, aren’t you putting your trust in that person to not only write something positive, but also to write it in a way that is understandable? Doesn’t it reflect somewhat on you how that person represents himself/herself?</p>

<p>I guess I’m just kind of “old school” because I think it does. That may be part of the reason I don’t post on message boards very often (or is it oftenly :slight_smile: ).</p>

<p>Old school parents don’t dive this much to the college admission process. I am speaking from my own experience. I am fighting hard, very hard, to stay on the sideline. My parents didn’t have to :-)</p>

<p>"They will generally look past the grammar and evaluate the content of the rec. "</p>

<p>I don’t agree with this at all, not even for a math teacher, but especially not for an English teacher.</p>

<p>A letter that’s an incoherent mess does not make the case for your student. Right or wrong, it’s a fact that poor grammar creates the impression that the writer is uneducated, lazy, or both. It makes the high school and the teacher look marginal. In the case of an English teacher, it erases any respect the reader might have had for your student’s grades and other achievements in the teacher’s class.</p>

<p>Seriously, folks, if I came on to CC and said “Johnnys a real good lerner and boy can he write his writing is like Shakespeares,” how much credit would you give my assessment of Johnny’s English skills?</p>

<p>I agree that a teacher betrays a student’s trust by writing such a recommendation. If the letter came to you through no fault of your own (it was mistakenly mailed to you, for example), I’d take it to the principal and complain.</p>

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<p>As a hiring manager that have asked for, checked and given references many times, from my experience, NO, references are not always good. When I give references, I am honest.</p>

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<p>Agree. My parents were not involved in my college process at all. I am some what involve in my kids.</p>

<p>If this is a poorly written letter from an English teacher, but a letter with content that you would like included, I would recommend the following:</p>

<p>1) Take the letter to the GC and explain your concerns.
2) Ask the GC if he/she would be comfortable writing a letter that would reference things from this letter in a manner such as - Buffy’s English teacher has described her as “the most dynamic player in any classroom discussion” etc.</p>

<p>This way you preserve the content of the original without anyone plaigarizing or misrepresenting themselves and you don’t send out a letter that reflects poorly on the education system your child is graduating from. </p>

<p>I agree with previous posters that if this were a math or science teacher the content would far outweigh the faulty presentation, but I would not send a poorly written letter from an English teacher given other options.</p>

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<p>You honestly think the letter contains errors anywhere near this grievous? I highly doubt it.</p>

<p>OP-
If it was written like this, I suggest this teacher isn’t competent to evaluate anyone’s performance in English and you probably should have asked somebody else to write it.</p>

<p>If the person wrote an extremely sloppy letter because they didn’t put enough effort into writing it, that is possibly a betrayal of trust. I suppose that’s possible, but jumping to that conclusion is unfair, IMO. Especially for people on a website who have not seen the actual text.</p>

<p>My D received a letter like the one you describe from a history teacher that (ironically) used to put a lot of emphasis on the students’ papers being correct. We were shocked by just how badly the rec was written - my kids would have done a better job of it in first grade.</p>

<p>We just threw the rec in the trash and lowered our opinion of that teacher considerably.</p>

<p>dump it in the trash, pronto!!! move on, and get another recommendation.</p>

<p>I think that many recommendation letters are poorly written, or are so vague and general that they are useless. </p>

<p>There is an excellent teacher at my daughters’ high school who writes many letters. I was on a scholarship selection committee and he wrote letters for 3 of the students. They all said exactly the same thing, even the adjectives he used to describe their personalities. I was floored. He knew that they were all for the same scholarship! </p>

<p>It’s probably better that under normal circumstances, students and parents never know what is in those letters.</p>

<p>I think there’s a difference between a letter being poorly written and being full of grammatical mistakes. A letter can be unfocused, too long, too general, etc., and still be written with reasonable grammatical accuracy. In that case, I would say use it. The readers will look at the content. However, if it is badly written grammatically, particularly by an English teacher, it would make me question the teacher’s ability/quality of school, etc. </p>

<p>Errors that are probably typos or the result of edits that required a grammatical change further on in the sentence that didn’t get changed are probably not serious. Also, if the teacher’s first language is not English, it would not be that serious. That, however, is usually pretty easily distinguishable from a native speaker’s mistakes.</p>

<p>We discovered quite by accident that one of S’s letters had an unfortunate error. The teacher had written a glowing recommendation but had specified one of the school’s names in the original letter. In printing out multiple copies for different schools, the original school’s name appeared in every letter. The teacher was unavailable for a rewrite, so we only used that letter to the school that was named. Fortunately, we had other recommenders available.</p>

<p>^That’s actually a pretty common problem. I’ve heard admissions officers say they just laugh about it. Students do it as often as teachers do.</p>

<p>While I tend to think that an English teacher recommendation might suffer for being seriously ungrammatical. Colleges get letters all the time that aren’t very useful. In fact MIT had suggestions on their site for teachers and GCs for how to make their letters more meaningful. Here’s the link to their suggestions and also comments about typical recommendations (which are grammatical!): [MIT</a> Admissions | Info For Schools & Counselors: Writing Evaluations](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/schools/writing_evaluations/index.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/schools/writing_evaluations/index.shtml)</p>

<p>Thanks everyone for the input. D has decided not to use it and get a another recommendation. We are also going to remove English as one of her intended majors since we thought it might look odd if she wants to be an English major but doesn’t have an English rec (kind of like an engineering major not getting a math/science rec). The new rec is from a language teacher so she’ll put down international relations or comp lit.</p>

<p>Good luck. I think that’s the right call.</p>

<p>I’m not a firm believer that you need a LOR from a teacher of a subject you may major in.</p>

<p>My D has listed Music, English, and French as potential majors. She did not ask the school music teacher for a LOR because she has 2 from private teachers. She did not ask an English teacher because she’s had a different one each year, one has retired, etc.</p>

<p>But her French teacher has had her for 3 years and, we are sure, is writing a glowing LOR.
The second (school) LOR is from her Chem Honors and AP Chem teacher. This is not a subject D will pursue in college, but she worked her tail off on it for 2 years with the same teacher, and is confident of an outstanding letter. In D’s mind, that trumps an English teacher LOR.</p>

<p>I see no reason to remove English as an intended major just because the student doesn’t have a LOC from one. There are all kinds of reasons one might not have a LOC from a particular teacher/subject. I think generally the LOC is to help with the decision for admission in general - not necessarily for an intended major. The major is often not even selected right away anyway and an English major isn’t facing the courseload challenges along with the requisite earlier major decision an engineering major is. Many students switch majors anyway after starting.</p>