<p>my college counselor doesn't exactly know much about colleges...she wrote me a rec letter, did not notice that i waived my right to see it and showed it to me. despite the fact that i offered to have an english teacher translate if she wanted to write in our native spanish, she wrote it in english and the letter contains MANY errors... should i just correct it, even if im not supposed to and didnt intentionally read it? is it going to reflect poorly on her or on both of us? or will it shed light on the kind of guidance and opportunities available to me?? id greatly appreciate any advice...i dont want to b dishonest and fix a letter im not even supposed to read but i dont want to be rejected b/c my counselor cant speak english</p>
<p>You waived your right to see the recommendation (a legal right, under certain laws) but the counselor could disregard your waiver and show you the letter without making YOU do anything wrong. </p>
<p>You should NOT correct the letter. It is her writing. If it's clear somehow that her native language is Spanish, and the letter says accurate and favorable things about you, you probably don't need to worry about this. </p>
<p>I'll be curious to read what others think about this. There are probably quite a few applicants to Harvard whose counselor or best recommender is not a native speaker of English.</p>
<p>My counselor also had similar problems.
The recommendation she wrote for me was inundated with grammatical and syntactical errors. Like me, she was an immigrant from a Latin American country.</p>
<p>After reading the letter, I went back to the common app site and read that you could have your recommendation written by "another school official that knows you better."</p>
<p>The next day I went to the school's assistant principal and asked him to write me one instead. Please note that I had a great friendship with that official.</p>
<p>In the end my recommendation came out great.</p>
<p>thanks for all the advice!! i had no idea i could ask someone besides the counselor for the rec. oh well, with only a week left in school this semester its too late to do that now but i'll just trust they understand that my counselor doesn't speak english that well...for my teacher recs, they will write them in spanish and give them to an english teacher to translate...do you think i should let colleges know about this somehow? thanks again :)</p>
<p>another question...is it too much to send 4 recomendations (two additional ones)?? this is provided they all add something new/different/complementary to my app...is it too annoying?</p>
<p>It is possible to have too many recommendations. Extra ones are only helpful if they add MUCH information to the ones you are requested to send in.</p>
<p>4 does seem like a lot...but the reason why i wanted to send the extra one is b/c i have not-so-awesome math sat scores and my math teacher wrote me a good rec saying im the most brilliant kid in class... but he did not fill out the common app form so id have to send it in as an additional document. i already had a brilliant additional rec by my music teacher, which i think is pretty necessary to validate my main ec since im not sending a cd... guess i'll have to choose tho. thanks for all the advice</p>