I read the recommendation my son’s 8th grade English teacher wrote for his admission to a private high school. We decided not to have him apply to that school so that recommendation was never submitted. He wrote that my kid , while smart, was a very lazy student who didn’t care at all about school work (true at that time) and that, in his opinion, would never amount to anything. I’m sure he felt he was just being honest. - even if he was completely wrong in his assessment of S’s future.
How did S turn out, @emilybee, if you care to share?
@Madison85 - We pulled him out of public high school 6 weeks into his freshman year when it appeared he was repeating the same behaviors - which is why I had to get a recommendation from an 8th grade teacher and needed to hand deliver with his app in the first place - but we decided on another school, so never even applied to that one at all and didn’t ask for a teacher recommendation.
He turned out great. After a week in new school, it was like he was a changed kid. Ended up with a 3.8 GPA, made National Honor Society, was in symphonic & jazz band, ran XC & track, and on Masterminds teams. Got accepted at all 9 colleges he applied to and is graduating in May from Bates (his top choice) and will hopefully be gainfully employed. 
Best decision we ever made was to change schools (and my public school district is one of the best in New York State.) We only regret that we didn’t move him in 6th grade.
@emilybee – your experience is why my daughter refused to sign any waiver, and why I agreed with that choice. When she was the same age, she was in the process of asking one teacher to write a rec letter when another walked into the room and offered to write one for her. She was skeptical, as she had the sense that the offering teacher had never liked her-- but under the circumstances she was cornered and had to accept the offer. The teacher gave her the recommendation letter in a sealed envelope – obviously he assumed that it would be confidential – but the high school application process required that the written materials be photocopied for submission as one packet of documents. (Remember “paper”?) Anyway, the “recommendation” was about the same as what your son experienced --so my daughter ended up going to a third, different teacher for the letter. (She did tell teacher #3 what had happened).
However, for college recs, it was general practice at both the high schools my kids attended for the teachers to give copies of LOR’s to the students, so it really didn’t matter. That was helpful as well --there was one new teacher at my daughter’s school who was very eager to write a LOR for her - he genuinely liked her and wrote a very nice letter, but it was also very generic, not the sort of stuff that would tend to be particularly helpful on a college app. She ended up using a letter from another teacher that was far more nuanced, including some critical remarks as well as praise, because it did a much better job of conveying information about who she was.
But it isn’t the LOR’s that I am thinking about with that U of Chicago admission… instead, I’ve always been curious about how they reacted to her essay. That was in the days when Chicago had the “uncommon” app – but my daughter’s essay was about as un-Chicago as one could get, and also pretty much broke every other rule of college-essay writing. Did that help? or is that part of the reason she was initially deferred with an EA application? She was admitted in the spring, but in the meantime had submitted a supplemental essay and writing sample.
I have to say that I thought that there would be more of a buzz about this article. All the chance threads, asking about the holistic admissions process, comparing outcomes from the results threads, etc. Even the idea that something (anything) could be gleaned from this that might be helpful to future applicants. Idk. I’m just surprised.
It appears that most students have only a casual interest in finding out the details of their successful application. Perhaps on the same level as not remembering test scores, numbers of AP, and other pedigree elements. Parents might be surprised to find out that such issues are rarely discussed in college, except by a few weird ducks. However, I can see why some parents would like to read the comments on the uncommon essays they … wrote!
Hoggirl, I really, truly think that the vast majority of students do not give a hoot about what adcomms said about them. They got in and went on their merry way.
Obsessing about things like this (not saying you are, just in general) is a very CC-esque thing that isn’t necessarily seen in the general population.
I was recently cleaning out some old boxes while packing. I found a letter from a high school teacher to a school that I never ended up applying to. It was a good letter but all things that she had already told me to my face. All of my college recommendation letter writers (for grad school) offered to show me their letters but I really didn’t see a need to read them. I was very close to them and knew how they felt about me. shrug
ETA: I will admit though that if I end up getting accepted into a U of M PhD program, I’d be curious to know how much weight a particular LOR had on my file considering the person I want to study under wrote my LOR (and recused herself from my admission decisions).
@romanigypsyeyes - I realize it’s only the students who can get access, but I expected the CC-esque (really like that term!) parents to be clamoring to find out anything they possibly could. Not possible for most parents, but I know two different parents with kids at Stanford who are requesting their files (current Stanford students are requesting - not the parents, obviously) in the hopes of gaining some insight for their younger siblings. Each parent has specifically told me this. Don’t know if the parents prompted the students to amke the request or if these two students would have done it anyway.
In line with what @Hoggirl is saying, I can see private college counselors trying to get hold of this information too, so that they can tell their clients that they have “special insight” into what selective colleges want.
They don’t keep these records for that long. And reviewers don’t write in ways that could expose them to liability. Most comments, ime, are phrased in the positive. And, just as with those hs LoRs, you have to know how to read between the lines. “Insight” really depends on the particular college and knowing how they use their lingo and the context of what they value.
Since the files are only available to admitted students at the college where they enrolled, in terms of liability concerns, it’s hard for me to see how there would be any “cause of action” for the student–he/she was admitted, and a lot of the interest focuses on colleges with single-digit admissions percentages.
It would be quite interesting to see the comments on the students who were not admitted. But FERPA does not require that. That might change in the future, although it would certainly be a mixed blessing if it did.
lookingforward, your post #29 seems to me to say that the negative comments (if any) are posed in a form that would be difficult to recognize, for anyone who is not part of the inner admissions circle. Given the comments on just one file, this is probably true. However, if a sufficient number of the files–both successful and not–along with the decisions became available (e.g., to a high school GC or an admissions counselor), it seems to me that any good reader of literature would quickly be able to discern what “counts” and what is a “slam.”
Even if all the comments are positive, the varying degrees of enthusiasm ought to be detectable.
It is possible that words like “conscientious” are used to mask negative judgments (i.e., this student spends too much time doing what he/she is told to do)–although being conscientious is a good quality in most circumstances.
I think that there is some attraction to the idea that if enough students did this, there would be more information available in this “opaque” process. Practically speaking, however, without information from the rejected applications there is limited value.
Even though it is now a repeated cliche, “There are more qualified applicants than spots available at the most selective colleges.”
The application process, while not a crap-shoot, is not entirely predictable. I do not see this information shining any new light on it.