<p>My D tried to choose teachers to write her letters who she was sure would do a good job. It seemed to me that any attempt to see the letters before they went out could be negatively interpreted by both the the teachers and the Guidance Counselor and could actually have had a negative imipact on the letters that ultimately were mailed out. It would sure be a shame to taint the process in that way, especially if one of the elite schools actually called the GC to clarify some aspect of the application down the line.</p>
<p>At our school you are required to waive your right to see the recommendation (the school makes you sign their own waiver form) or you don’t get a LOR, period. No one has a right to a LOR, it’s a favor done on behalf of the student.</p>
<p>I suppose you could not waive your right on the application and then force the college to let you see it after they have received it but what’s the point? The college has the LOR in hand, so what are you going to do? Protest it?</p>
<p>All of the LOR’s go through our GC office and I am positive they review them to make sure they contain enough detail to paint a accurate portrayal of each student. We would all love glowing, over the top recommendations but I think an accurate and balanced picture of the student is fair. I doubt that many teachers write bad LORs, most want their students to succeed, why would they write a negative LOR when they can easily say, ‘I’m not sure I can write you a good LOR?’</p>
<p>I think of my own son - he’s a good student but he has his strengths and his weakness. I’m sure his teacher recommendations (both from teachers who taught him in multiple years) highlighted his strengths as a student. If they were discuss some of his weakness, I would be okay with that. The point of the college admission process is to find schools that would be a good fit for the student. Sometimes, it seems like people lose sight of that fact. If a college reads a LOR and decides the kid won’t be a good fit, then, IMHO, maybe that’s a sign the system is working correctly. Sounds reasonable to me. In my opinion, only the college can determine whether any particular student would be a good fit for their school - regardless of how much we or our kids think the college would be a good fit for them.</p>
<p>As an employer, we always check references. Sometimes, people will bring in written LOR but the ones that we consider most highly are the ones where we talk directly to a past employer. Sometimes, the reference keeps a person from getting a job but usually if the candidate is strong enough, we will take a less than stellar reference into consideration but not automatically disqualify the candidate. References (like LORs) are a way of gathering additional information about a candidate. It’s important to hire an employee that will be a good fit as it is for a college to accept students who will be a good fit. I guess, I see trying to ‘control’ the LOR as a way of trying to circumvent the process to till it in your child’s favor. There will always be people that do that. I’m positive this is why my son’s school refuses to write LOR unless you waive your rights. I don’t see anything wrong with that.</p>
<p>Oh for heaven’s sake. If you really want to read the letters of recommendation…ask your kiddo to ask the teachers who wrote them IF they will give you a copy. Some will…and some won’t. There you go.</p>
<p>By the way…what difference does it make NOW. They are already sent to the colleges…can’t change what they say now.</p>
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<p>Wow. I don’t know where you got that. I never even met two of the teachers who wrote letters for my daughter, and certainly never discussed LOR’s with the third. </p>
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<p>No, my daughter did the choosing. The only involvement I had was for one college, where my daughter wasn’t sure whether it was better to choose the letter from the science teacher or the one from the foreign language teacher-- but she was more concerned with the way they had filled out the check boxes on the forms that college used on its recommendation form (not a common app school). I think the teacher who had written the better letter had not ranked my daughter as high when checking the boxes, whereas the weaker letter had better check marks. I don’t even remember what my daughter decided – I just helped her flesh out pros and cons in her thinking. </p>
<p>I’d note that my kids’ experience was similar to yours – terrific letters from English teachers, with science teachers being more terse. I think it’s just that English teachers tend to be better writers, plus they probably enjoy the opportunity to show off their writing talents.</p>
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<p>I don’t see how it helps the admissions committee to get a letter that says, “Mary Ellen is a bright and conscientious student who was a pleasure to teach.” when they already know that Mary Ellen is a straight A student. A LOR without much detail is completely meaningless.</p>
<p>No one is talking about “shopping around” through dozens of teachers. Students are going to ask the teachers they like and respect for the recs-- but the practice of picking the best 2 out of 3 is one that many g.c.'s follow even in schools that do not allow the students to see the letters. My son only had 2 letters, they were fine, no reason to ask for a 3rd. </p>
<p>Rich in detail is always helpful, especially when its the sort of details that aren’t apparent from other information. If I had been given the opportunity to edit the letters my daughter had, I would have eliminated some detail actually simply because some was redundant and some referenced stuff that was obvious from the EC list. </p>
<p>Finally… “glowing” recommendation is not the goal. When my college advisor was writing my recommendation letter for law school, he asked me to tell him what areas I thought were my weaknesses. He said he always included mention of one weakness in LOR’s to make them look balanced, and then noted improvement in that area – so he also wanted to know what I was doing to address & overcome that weakness. </p>
<p>My son had a letter from an AP teacher who had taught him for 2 successive years which specifically noted a weakness and growth in that area – I don’t remember what it was, but whatever it was, it was something of a problem when my son was a high school junior, and the teacher had observed remarkable progress a year later when it was time to write the recommendation letter. I think experienced LOR writers know that it best to bring the applicant to life in a way that seems candid and realistic. </p>
<p>My kids certainly understood this - they wrote humorous and self-deprecating essays along the general theme of highlighting mistakes or areas where they struggled, and then showing how they had learned from or overcome the experience. I didn’t tell them what to write – I gave my daughter the Harry Bauld book which was better than anything I could have said anyway. </p>
<p>I find it almost amusing that people think that the goal is a “glowing” letter extolling the student’s virtues. When I referred to “negative” information conveyed secretly, I was thinking more of situations when the “negative” is untrue or unfounded, or done in a way intended to subvert an application. I personally know of several instances of this happening (not always in the context of college admissions). A smart applicant will anticipate their known weaknesses and attempt to address them directly in their application, rather than hide them. But there’s no way to anticipate a lie – or a grossly mistaken opinion. It is probably quite rare that it happens, but it does happen. </p>
<p>Here’s an example that happened to Northstarmom:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062929721-post12.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062929721-post12.html</a></p>
<p>(NSM was accepted to Harvard anyway… but that’s a prime reason why I think that letters submitted ‘in confidence’ are suspect).</p>
<p>At our magnet high school, which sends a large number of kids to top schools, the GC made it very clear that all students were expected to waive the right of access to LOR’s. She said this was the norm – schools would only trust letters submitted in confidence.</p>
<p>Personally, this annoyed me. If colleges only want letters where access has been waived, then there should have been no choice offered. This is one of those unspoken rules that insiders seem to know, but there are plenty of naive GC’s and students who have no idea that the letters may be judged unfavorably if the right to access has not been waived. My husband reads and writes LOR’s for grad school and he concurs that access must always be waived. Again, I don’t see the point in offering a choice if one of the choices is so universally viewed as wrong.</p>
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The point is, it’s the law. They can’t just “not offer” the rights that FERPA conveys in the event the student is admitted and will matriculate. That’s why they ask for the waiver.
How we handled this – geek<em>son made his requests and asked the teachers to give their LORs and Common App TE forms to the GC. We then asked the GC to pick the best ones to submit. How we handled calmom’s concern about teachers who unintentionally write lackluster LORs and related issues – geek</em>son requested letters earlier for something that didn’t require a FERPA waiver. Having those in hand, we could see who was articulate, gave rich detail, and generally conveyed what we thought would be the right kind of impression. So he kind of knew what to expect. It helped that his school was small; his teachers all knew him very well in multiple capacities and had many anecdotes to share.</p>
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<p>As I said before, my daughter did NOT waive and she was accepted to all of her reach colleges where she had any reasonable chance of admission. </p>
<p>I can see from this thread that it is quite easy for some students to check that little waiver box AND also get copies of the letters from their teachers, so I guess if those students want to gain whatever advantage they can from pretending that they haven’t seen their letters, its fine. </p>
<p>For the others --well there’s a risk that LOR’s can hurt, even if they were well meaning and intended to help. There’s the whole damn-with-faint-praise thing. Of course its a much bigger risk for students like my kids who attended public schools in a state that where the public universities don’t ask for or accept LOR’s - it means that there are a lot of teachers who don’t have a clue as to how to write one, and g.c’s with massive caseloads who aren’t going to to much more than shuffle paper. </p>
<p>As a lawyer I am absolutely appalled that any organization that relies on federal tax dollars to operate would try to force applicants to waive rights granted by federal law. I don’t care if its a hyper-technical right that no one really understands or cares about – its still a right, and I have a dim view of agencies that premise any sort of benefits on the waver of legal rights.</p>
<p>If FERPA only grants you the right to see your LORs at the school where you have been accepted <em>and</em> matriculated, then I don’t particularly see the value of NOT waiving your right to see your LORs at that school. You are already in and have agreed to attend. Do you really want to know that you got in despite the negative recommendation of one of your teachers, like NSM? You cannot go to the schools that you did not get into and ask to see the LORs. You have no right to see the LORs before you commit to a particular college or while you are waiting to hear from other colleges. </p>
<p>In an ideal world, all teachers would write meaningful LORs full of anecdotal praise for the student. This is not an ideal world. There are HS where students can only receive a limited number of LORs and many teachers will only do a limited number of LORs. I can’t imagine a HS that would knowingly allow students to “shop” for the best LORs, letting the students decide if Rec #1 is better than Rec #2 based on weighing the value of Rec #1’s essay vs. Rec #2’s numerical assessment. Would it be nice to see the LORs, either to correct mistakes or to give your or your child “warm fuzzies”? Sure. But that doesn’t translate into a “right”.</p>
<p>It’s the principal of the thing. FERPA reflects a public policy determination about access to certain records. The colleges are saying that they don’t like a particular right that exists under federal law, so they want their applicants to waive it. What other federally-protected rights might they find inconvenient in the future?</p>
<p>The person who has ultimate control in the end is the person writing the recommendation. He could show the recommendation to the applicant before mailing it off and so not care if the waiver is not given. Or he could say that he doesn’t write recommendations for students who do no waive their right to view the recommendation, as a matter of principle.</p>