<p>Is the guidance counselor recommendation really important? My counselor barely knows me, and he felt uncomfortable writing me a letter. He called the admissions office, they and said it was optional. He didn't write me one, then, and just filled out the Secondary School Report. I got rejected, and was wondering if this could have been one of the reasons.</p>
<p>By the way, congrats to everybody who got in. I hate you =P</p>
<p>Haha I don’t know how much that played a part, but my guidance counselor wrote me an awesome recommendation letter.</p>
<p>Darn, I thought you were gonna get in website designer!</p>
<p>Haha I don’t know how much that played a part, but my guidance counselor wrote me an awesome recommendation letter.</p>
<p>Darn, I thought you were gonna get in website designer!</p>
<p>I don’t know how much weight Columbia puts on the rec letter from your counselor, but I think maintaining a (good) relationship w/ him/her is important. Columbia actually emailed my counselor to ask more about me, so she took the chance to tell them again how I would be a good fit. Even if you just go and chat with him/her every so often, it should help.</p>
<p>columbia looks at everything and reads through the lines. if your gc doesn’t know you well, it probably would hurt you more if you received a lackluster message. the only way i could see it hurting is if for some reason the adcom wondered why he didn’t know you and did know others (that we could always speculate about forever and not have a an answer). i think you can’t read it like one part will lead to a denial, but rather other parts added together made the case not that you aren’t smart (and reading your great work and awards you seem like a great kid), but that you might not be ideal for columbia. </p>
<p>good luck on your other applications. keep your head up.</p>
<p>in the end - everything matters in colu</p>