<p>By bad, I mean "not exceptional" in the context of elite college admissions (HYPS).</p>
<p>For example, a teacher checks off that you're only top 10%, and remarks that you're a "pleasure to have in class," "active in class discussion" with "diligent" work habits... but everything just falls flat and sounds so...average!</p>
<p>How detrimental are these bland teacher recs?</p>
<p>They’re kinda just… there. They certainly don’t help, but they don’t hurt. The ineptitude of a teacher to write an effective letter of recommendation isn’t on the shoulders of the student. Luckily there is more than one letter of rec. So if the other(s) speaks to who you are much better, they’ll look to that one.</p>
<p>I would not consider that bad at all, just not a huge asset to your application. Letters of rec are just another area that can boost your chances by a small amount. As long as they aren’t ACTUALLY bad, and you have other areas to make you stand out on your app, I wouldn’t worry about them.</p>
<p>I have the same issue. my teacher rec is really bland -_- I mean I wanted to ask him is I could write my own rec and get him to sign it, but like born2dance94 said, there are more letters so one bad rec wont hurt or help you.</p>
<p>That’s actually hilarious ^</p>
<p>I’ve been wondering the same thing. Before the guidance office at my school sent off all the paperwork, they asked me to come in and make sure everything was there. And as the counselor flipped through the papers, I saw the rec I asked my poetry teacher to do. Y’all, I am not playing when I say that recommendation wasn’t as long as this post. Now, I’m worried. Especially since she did FOUR of them (my recommendations).</p>
<p>Maybe she wrote it
in the form
of a poem
?</p>
<p>^PAHAHAHA! That made me smile. But I wish that were the case.</p>
<p>^Hopefully she’s just a really concise teacher! For example, “In my 300 years of teaching, I’ve never had a student as intellectually stimulating and academically inclined as kgoodwin18… TAKE THIS STUDENT, fools.” ;D</p>
<p>So, just to clarify, even if your recs are super boring (“diligent”, “conscientious”, “good attendance”, etc), they won’t be the reason you weren’t accepted?</p>
<p>
Correctomundo!</p>
<p>Whew! When I read the title of this post, you had me worried. I thought the teacher may have actually written terrible things about you. A bland recommendation is WAY different than a bad one. ;)</p>
<p>Colleges aren’t going to penalize you if your teachers doesn’t know how to write good recs. But realize that when most applicants admitted have stellar recs, it does hurt some.</p>
<p>The reason I’m worried is because I’m an average student for some of the schools I’m applying to, so if when making the decisions, it comes down to say 3 students and me, they’ll look to the recs as a way of deciding so that’ll be a strike against me. </p>
<p>yes its a hypothetical situation, but it can become reality.</p>
<p>What if my other rec is decent though? My history teacher volunteered to write it and he said his letter was “nothing short of stellar”… Now I’m beginning to worry that his rec wouldn’t match up with my English teacher’s rec (the one that’s super bland and boring.)</p>
<p>I don’t think bland recs will hurt you. If /all/ your recommendations are bland though that might be a problem. :'P But if just one of them is meh, you should be fine. Like people have said already, adcoms will probably turn to your other letter of recommendation if one of them is run-of-the-mill (:</p>
<p>Laurier, its really weird that you had this situation. I was kind of in the same situation. At my school we can view our letters or recc if the teacher allows it and my teacher allowed it. One of my reccomenders did an excellent job but I knew they would because the relationship I have with them. However, there was another teacher that I was surprised with when they checked off top ten percent overall and some top five percents. I was a bit offended because some of my peers got one percent and I was like my average was the same as theirs. All I can say is GET THE RECC FROM SOMEONE THAT LIKES YOU. The reccomendation letter is the most BIASED thing you will ever work with. If a teacher feels strongly about you, it will come from the heart and it will be good. If you don’t have a relationship with the teacher forget about it. One of my letters kind of contradicted everything my other letter said. Its kind of hard to explain but one of my teachers talked about how i was a great writer. But my other reccomender said I was 10 percent or 5 percent or something like that for that. So idk what teachers deals are sometimes.</p>
<p>Oh god, tell me about it, my math teacher (he’s 74) didn’t get the whole recommendation thing at all, he wrote four lines about how I match up to the tick boxy characteristics and that’s that. </p>
<p>Does that hurt my chances? I have two other recs which are hopefully a lot better…</p>
<p>Exactly! I feel like recs can be super subjective and biased (sometimes in the negative way too), and in that sense, it’s not a fair measure of academic aptitude for college admissions. </p>
<p>Bland recs, two recs that seem to contradict each other, unenthused teachers, and recs that don’t reflect your personality at all because teachers had to write 72947384 other recs, etc…the list of potential shortcomings could go on forever :(</p>