<p>I was reading a college guide book, and the writer(she got accepted to Princeton) says she wrote 4 recs herself, then give the recs to teachers for them to check, then sign.
I was shocked, cause isn't writing your own recs is considered cheating? Unless it's like an open secret or something?
What's going on?</p>
<p>Yes, that would be cheating.</p>
<p>One might question the ethics of such a practice, but if the instructor signs, that means the instructor is assuming the responsibility for the facts and opinions presented in the document. That doesn’t seem dishonest to me in any meaningful way. I’m sure it happens quite often.</p>
<p>It would be highly unethical if somehow a student hacked into the instructor’s recommendation and replaced it with one of her own without the instructor’s knowledge.</p>
<p>It would be unethical on the teacher’s part to sign accept responsibility for such a letter if a college made it clear that they expected the letter to be the teacher’s own, original work. I don’t recall seeing anything like that, but I suppose it’s possible.</p>
<p>Not illegal, unethical.</p>
<p>@WasatchWriter It’s exactly what happened, the teachers are supposed to write their own recs, instead, the writer wrote them and give them to teachers for them to sign. And the writer says it’a great way to write the best recs. LOL</p>
<p>What happens very often is something in between, and it’s also something I think is usually a good idea. Students who are asking for recommendations prepare a “brag sheet” which lists your various activities and accomplishments. This is provided to teachers and guidance counselors who are writing the recs, and they can use it or not as they prefer.</p>
<p>Yes, unethical.</p>
<p>The best practice is for a student to arrange a meeting with each teacher, and talk about the student’s strong points and what he or she wants stressed in the recommendation. The teacher is supposed to take notes and write their own letter.</p>
<p>I do recommendations all the time for graduate school or special programs for my undergrads. For one thing, many students barely have interacted with me other than sitting in class and getting graded, and they want a recommendation. It’s ridiculous to ask a teacher who barely knows you to write a recommendation.</p>
<p>Another thing is that I will not write a recommendation about a student’s overall activities <em>unless</em> I know about them personally. I had a great student who was also involved with the student group in my department, and also I had spoken with her about other activities. So I was able to put those activities into the recommendation.</p>
<p>I find it unethical to write a recommendation for a student I barely know, who has not tried to get help or otherwise ask questions during a class. If a student sends me a pre-written letter, I likely would read it and possibly use part of it. Or I might read it and laugh, and say I can’t do the recommendation.</p>
<p>I also have been asked to show the student what I will or did write. That is unethical as well.</p>
<p>So giving a teacher a pre-written “use this” letter, and watch them sign it - does the student stand there as the teacher folds the signed letter and puts it in an envelope and signs over the seal, and hands it over? That is extremely unethical, on both the part of the student and the teacher.</p>
<p>Worse things have been done to get into college though.</p>
<p>
I don’t see anything unethical about this, unless you tell the college that the student hasn’t seen it.</p>
<p>To determine if a specific behavior is ethical or not, we must compare it to a set of standards. Standards can be generally agreed upon (in which case they have probably been written down somewhere, such as the many definitions of plagiarism out there) or they may be specific to a situation, such as the requirements a professor puts on a particular assignment.</p>
<p>I’m perfectly happy to agree that the behavior OP describes is unethical if someone will kindly point me to a set of standards. So far, I’m reading a lot of opinions that sound off the cuff.</p>
<p>(Obviously, someone can have a personal set of ethics that differs from other standards, but in most cases it’s fairly rude to insist that other follow them.)</p>
<p>I think sometimes people say that something is unethical when a better word for it would be something like “cheesy.” I think it’s cheesy for a teacher to just sign a recommendation letter written by the student (and I seem to recall reading about some teachers even asking for these).</p>
<p>It is definitely unethical to “insist” that they sign it or pressure them to use it at all. If a teacher uses a letter provided by the student they are being lazy and behaving in an unprofessional manner. If the letter states that the student has “waived the right to see it” or it is otherwise presented as a waived letter - it is 100% unethical on both the student (who read/wrote it) and the teacher (who signed it). </p>
<p>This sounds like a colossally bad idea. A brag sheet, resume or other suggestions to the teacher of things they could mention will make their job easier and be a good thing. A fully written letter reminds me of the old joke about a note to the school that said “Please excuse Jim from school as he was home sick yesterday. Sincerely, My Mom”. I have to think that the same way admissions officers say they can sniff out adult written essays, that they would sniff out something wrong with a letter written by a teenager. </p>
<p>It seems like a awful burden to put on the kid, btw - ask them to write their own rec letter.
It will feel wrong and fake.</p>
<p>I’m with Hunt. It’s kind of cheesy. A little bit sketch. And I suspect that most of the time it happens, it’s the teacher who initiates the plan. “I don’t have a lot of time this week. Just write something, and I’ll sign it.”</p>
<p>My daughter unwittingly got pulled into this by her GC. It started when the National Merit people wanted a report from the GC. She asked for a brag sheet. My daughter is a fairly gifted writer, so it was a well-written “brag sheet.” It was more like a report – or a letter. Her GC admitted to us that she tweaked enough words to make it fit the NM expectations, and that was it. My daughter’s words became her words. The GC used essentially the same document for the Common App. Too be honest, I did not trust in her ability to work from the “brag sheet” and make any improvements. Anything she sent would have been an inferior document. So, while I was initially taken aback, I was also a bit relieved.</p>
<p>So what I wonder is this: Assuming the student-authored brag sheet is truthful, if the recommender is going to paraphrase it anyway, is there an important difference between doing that and simply asking the student to turn the brag sheet into a letter?</p>
<p>I do agree, however, that it’s unfair to insist that a student to do this if the student is pressed for time.</p>
<p>For me, the difference in the situations described above is that the GC document is a “report” about the student and school.<br>
To have a letter expressing what the teacher thinks and feels about the student, not written by the teacher is clearly unethical.
“Suzy is the best student I have taught this year”, “I am confident that Tim will rise to any challenge and succeed in his college career” etc are putting emotions/opinions into the teacher’s name. Statements like that written by the student go past cheesy and on to unethical. </p>
<p>
Just in the degree of cheesiness.</p>
<p>Is any student really going to write a letter for the recommender which includes statements like “Suzy is the best student I have taught this year?” That would require a lot of brass. I guess I can imagine a situation in which the recommender essentially tells the student what to put in the letter, and that would be slightly less cheesy.</p>
<p>If a teacher told my kid to write her own rec letter, I’d tell her to go whole hog: “Suzy is the best student I have EVER had in my whole teaching career.”</p>