There are many students in my year group and only one counselor who none of us really get to know until the year we’re applying. What he usually does is ask teachers for comments about the students and then write the recommendation based on that. I’m afraid that it won’t be a great recommendation, though because he has so many students to take care of and is extremely laid back. He also doesn’t know me very well but I know my teachers will have great things to say. I’m just afraid it will be a generic recommendation and will hurt my chances for ivy. How much weight is given to the counselor recommendation? Unfortunately, the one at my school isn’t very helpful.
Ivies will understand that counselors at big public schools likely won’t be able to write personal rec letters for every single student, so just try the best you can, and if it turns out generic, it shouldn’t hurt you too much as thousands of other students who are applying from big public schools will have generic rec letters as well.
It won’t. Colleges are well aware that some schools, particularly large public HS’s have GC’s that have many hundreds of students. [url=http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs]Here[/url] (scroll down to GC rec for Mike) is what MIT has to say on the subject, but the answer will hold true for other colleges as well.
your teachers recommendations are far more important.
relax
GC’s recs usually focus on 1) what your school has to offer and 2) how rigorous was your academic transcript compared to what was available and what your other classmates took. That’s all based on data that is available even to a brand new GC. At small or private schools, the GC gets much more involved. But colleges do not expect that from large public high schools, where GCs spend most of their time trying to help the kids who have serious personal issues to contend with. Top students don’t get on the GC radar generally at those schools and that’s okay.
Make sure you give your GC a copy of your resume, if they do not already have one.
Thank you so much for the replies! I feel a lot better about this now. My counselor has a copy of my resume and other documents so hopefully that should be okay!