I have recently had the chance to look at one of my recommendations from a teacher. I like my teacher very much; however, their recommendation was very basic and mostly just retold my resume. Worst case scenario is all of my recommendations are like this. If that was the case, how severely is that going to hurt my chances. At more selective schools in particular.
At highly selective schools, it can hurt. They look for key words, and the LORs, especially from GC count as party of algorithm
LOR are critical. Since most appplicants have great grades and scores, one of the major differentiating factors will be unique/outstanding LORs. this is where private schools have an edge. the teachers know how to construct an attention getting letter while public school teachers either don’t have the time nor the motivation/incentive to provide such letters.
I agree that LOR’s are critical at very selective schools. One thing that I feel helped our D20 get into a highly selective school was the fact that she had requested 3 or 4 teachers to write recommendations for her (one of her schools allowed for up to 4 I believe) so when submitting the app to her reach school she asked her counselor to read her teacher LORs for her and recommend which 2 to choose. Surprisingly, the one teacher she was most confident would write her a solid letter was the one her counselor recommended not sending and it ultimately turned out for the best.
I’m curious how you had a chance to look at a LOR. Did the teacher give it to you?
Too late now, but a suggestion is to provide a teacher with a “resume”, narrative of the themes you are emphasizing in your application, and maybe even some subtle suggestions on the type of phrases that catch an AdComm’s attention. Obviously there’s a delicate balance in not saying”here’s what I want you to write”.
As noted above, yes, words like lone of the best students in my career” vs. “was a good student” can certainly swing things at elite colleges where 5x the admitted class has 3.95+ and 1450+.