Need advice: botched LOR!

Parents Forum
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<p>Before I begin: wholehearted thanks to the CC community from another long time lurker. </p>

<p>I need advice in a really sensitive problem regarding a LOR for DS. Personally I consider it a long story with many angles, but I will try to keep it short and to the point. Here it goes. </p>

<p>I found out today that one of the teachers that DS thought for a long time he was closest to wrote him a LOR that refers to one accomplishment DS did not accomplish and one summer program DS never applied to, much less attended, last summer. The LOR, otherwise apparently glowing, was sent earlier this spring as part of application packages for three rather prestigious summer research programs. DS is a hs junior, class of 2013, and had hopes that at least one of these programs might accept him. In fact, he did preliminary work toward one of them the entire school year long, week after week, just to be able to compete for a chance in such a program. But the mistakes in the teacher's LOR are in stark contradiction with Ds's real resume and all related info that went into the apps. I fear that the only outcome he can expect is a bunch of curt rejections. </p>

<p>My question:
The LOR was given to DS in a sealed and signed envelope like all other LORs and transcripts that he had to handle for his apps (packages were put together by DS, not GC). The teacher never showed it to him. This one turned out to be extra and late for a package that required only two recs. DS sent two other, and this one was put away, unopened, for over 6 weeks now. I opened it today, unbeknownst to DS. I am not going to debate if it was the right thing to do. I had a feeling, after witnessing what I consider a number of puzzling "flags" from this teacher. Since the teacher is still on DS's list re: college recs, something must be done. But what? Should I tell DS about the letter and have him drop the teacher from the list? In this case, a lot of potentially good stuff goes down the drain (had him for hon. class in 9th grade, AP class in 10th, mentor for projects every year since 9th grade, also for NHS induction, etc). If not, the teacher must be informed that he made serious mistakes in the LOR and must correct them. How should this be done? </p>

<p>I am honestly bewildered, upset, speechless, at a loss.</p>

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<p>Ouch.</p>

<p>I would either drop the teacher from the list or talk to the teacher, parent to teacher in a private setting (ie not in the hall–on the phone or set up a meeting). Chances are, the teacher was busy with LORs and made a mistake. A really, really bad mistake. If you politely bring it to their attention, you have the possibility of an outstanding LOR for next year. Frankly, if there are too many red flags or the meeting does not go well, I’d consider someone else for the LOR.</p>

<p>So sorry this happened, and best of luck on the summer program (the letter did not go to both programs, correct?)</p>

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<p>How can you talk to the teacher without it being apparent that you, as a parent, opened a sealed envelope that you had no business opening? That’s a touchy situation…maybe the teacher would then refuse to write any more letters since he can’t be sure that any future letters won’t also be opened.</p>

<p>I think your S would be better served getting letters of recommendations from teachers from his junior year. In fact, some schools ask that the teachers’ recommendations be from the junior year, and not earlier years. Check the schools to which he will be applying.</p>

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<p>Oh, how awful!
An idea. For next year, at the beginning of the year, give this teacher a clear one page cheat sheet. Some schools call them Parent Brag Sheets. Others might call them student resumes. They are lists of things that are good about this student. </p>

<p>Then, this might work: Create a custom list for this teacher. On this summary, for headings, use categories that the stuff this teacher listed would fall under, and have it be obvious that the ones he was thinking went with your kid were NOT there. For example, if the teacher said that your kid won an astronomy award, create a bold faced underlined header that says “Astronomy Awards” and underneath it, write “none” or “none yet.”</p>

<p>(At our H.S., college letters of reference go through Naviance - do yours? If so, I think you could tell the GC to check on the ref from this teacher. Junior and senior year teachers are best, I think, but I wouldn’t want to lose this teacher’s letter of reference, either.)</p>

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<p>Does your counselor get to see the letter of recommendations? Either way, the ‘brag sheet’ is a very good idea and should be given to every teacher, not only to avoid the kind of things that happened in your case but also to save the teachers time.</p>

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<p>Thanks everybody. I guess the general consensus is to either drop the teacher for future recs or use the ‘brag sheet’. Tricky, but have to do something.</p>

<p>@ Mom2M:
The LOR went out to 3 (three) different programs. I guess all three are compromised. I wish there was a 12th hour way to fix the mess somehow.
And unfortunately there have been other red flags, indeed, all related to ECs.</p>

<p>@ellemenope:
I will try to advise DS to ask for LORs from more recent teachers, but it will be difficult to go around it. DS is very interested in the subject taught by this teacher, and so far he is contemplating a related major. Moreover, this teacher is the only one who can confirm Ds’s continuity of interest and one important EC that he pursued every year. There is no class left in the subject track that DS could take at hs, no club, no other related activity that would not involve this person, because he is the lead teacher in the subject. He actually was head of the science dept. until last year. With one exception that he is not interested in right now, DS is about to exhaust the other science options as well. If DS drops this teacher, there will be a gaping hole in his recs packet.</p>

<p>“you, as a parent, opened a sealed envelope that you had no business opening”: </p>

<p>I do know what you are saying, but I keep scratching my head. In this particular situation, did I really not have any business to be aware that a “sealed envelope” is compromising DS’s credibility on the eve of the almighty admissions season or maybe right straight through it? Then whose offense is more despicable: mine, that I found out about a blatant ‘error’ that makes DS look like an idiot, and probably will leave him with a bunch of hard-to-justify, eyebrow-rising rejections? or the teacher’s, who actually created the whole situation? </p>

<p>@MM2K & @bt2:
We do have Naviance, but I doubt non-college LORs are logged in there. Good idea for the ‘brag sheet’ headings, MM2K, will keep in mind. The ‘brag sheet’ is actually one of the first things I thought about too, because we did receive a ‘brag form’ from the GC. Didn’t use it because Ds had already asked this teacher for recs before, and was quite confident that teacher knew a good many things about him. For example, the EC in which Ds has him as a mentor is not being pursued by other students in his hs beyond the school level. Not that they couldn’t, but hs does not officially pursue it either, apparently because of “too much paperwork”. Ds had to do the paperwork himself.</p>

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<p>I suppose that this feeling is what made you open the envelope, because you thought that the information within might not be correct. It is your business to be aware that the envelope might have incorrect information in it–but not to open it. </p>

<p>Maybe the following scenario could have worked: Take the sealed letter back to teacher. Your son tells the teacher that he wasn’t able to use the letter because he was concerned, from what the teacher has said, that the teacher was mistaken about certain things that your S has done in the past. Let’s open the letter and your S can help the teacher correct any mistakes.</p>

<p>Now, if you still need that letter of rec, which you say that he does–and you don’t want to have the same problem of the rec saying incorrect things…</p>

<p>How about going to the GC and explaining the situation of being worried about the accuracy of the letter from this teacher. Maybe the GC can ask the teacher to allow him to see the letter–if there are any mistakes, the GC can bring them up with the teacher (No, Johnny didn’t go to Space Camp last year, etc.).</p>

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<p>I don’t see where having opened the envelope is problem ethically as your son’s issue is that the letters were already sent. The whole sealed thing is so that you can’t solicit many letters and screen for the best or write your own. Schools, scholarship programs and summer programs want to be sure that the information is accurate and not doctored up by the applicant, or that the teacher didn’t feel pressure to make the letter wholly positive. He honestly solicited and sent the letter out only to find the inaccuracies later. I wouldn’t think this would be a problem to address directly.</p>

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<p>I agree with saintfan. I think that your son should focus on preventing inaccuracies in the future. Your student did what he should have: “honestly solicited and sent the letter out.”</p>

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<p>Well, the first rejection of the three expected has arrived today.
It was a long shot even without the current mess, so I guess it is ok, in the long run.
The next two are going to hurt much worse, one - really bad. DS really hoped he had a good chance there. </p>

<p>@ellemenope:
Your scenario is an easy one. Teacher said something erroneous, go talk to him, teacher is good, maybe absent-minded, misunderstanding solved. Not so much in this case: this is a longish history of teacher being supportive about smaller things, while consistently prone to odd mishandling of paperwork, delays, runarounds, etc, when it comes to important things. Every time I raised eyebrows, but DS was ok with it all, he trusted his teacher. It would be very hard to ask questions based on such subtle flags and no explicit info, but it is impossible not to notice the flags either. I think my conundrum stands. </p>

<p>@saintfan & @MM2K: Thanks again. I’ll have to handle our losses at this point, and try to somehow fix things for the future. Inner screaming voice hard to quiet down though.</p>

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<p>What you did was unethical. Sure you can come up with justifications, but that doesn’t make it okay. In particular, how much more unethical your actions were than someone else is not relevant at all. The fact that you would not consider letting the teacher know what you did speaks volumes, doesn’t it? </p>

<p>I write LORs all the time, put them in sealed envelops and it is generally assumed by any reasonable person that a sealed letter is confidential. Hopefully I’ve never made such a mistake, but there are loads of busy people in the world, writing many letters, and many make unintentional mistakes.</p>

<p>No idea what you’ll do but I hope you walk away from this teacher. You already had this person invest work for your son that wasn’t even appreciated (since the letter was never sent, it just wasted the teachers time); your red flags comment suggests you don’t have trust in this teacher to begin, with so why bother burdening them some more to help your son?; and you violated a norm that gave this teacher the ability to write freely because they trusted the letter would not be opened by anyone but the recipient. </p>

<p>I guess I’m more concerned with protecting this teacher than helping your son at this point.</p>

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<p>Is it possible that the teacher was writing other LORs and, using some kind of template, forgot to edit the letter with your son’s unique history in mind?</p>

<p>Our school sends out grades and each teacher writes a paragraph about your child. One teacher apparently had a basic form to his paragraph, which he completely neglected to edit properly. He stated, “Susie Q participates in class, asks thoughtful, insightful questions, and did a great job on her research paper. However, Melinda needs to incorporate more supporting data in her test essay questions. I have really enjoyed teaching Glenda this semester!” Nice. :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>D1 had an issue with a LOR from a coach for a scholarship. The scholarship did no trequire that the LORs be sealed, so the coach emailed it to D1. D1 read it, and noticed that the coach mentioned that she earned an award that she did not. D1 realized that the letter was written for a girl from the previous class, which was obvious, since the coach referred to the other girl by name in the letter. D1 told the coach, and she sent a new letter.</p>

<p>Makes me wonder how many LORs have similar errors.</p>

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<p>We haven’t reached the point of LOR since our oldest is a sophomore, so I’m asking this question out of complete ignorance: Why would a letter of recommendation be sealed in the first place?</p>

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<p>Are these the only errors in the letter? If no, what other errors are there?</p>

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<p>I have two more or less opposing thoughts about this:</p>

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<li> It will not be the first time that a college admissions office had problems with a writer of an LOR, or found seeming inaccuracies in an LOR.</li>
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<p>2a. This is someone to whom you want to entrust your child’s college application?</p>

<p>2b. In view of everything that has happened, how will you be able to tolerate letting this teacher write and submit a recommendation without your seeing it?</p>

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<p>Perhaps the GC letter can cover the material that concerns you, and a different teacher can write the LOR. And, of course, DS’s application itself can bring out his interests and the continuity thereof.</p>

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<p>Good question, Agent, and it’s the reason some are bothered. It’s customary to waive the right to see your LORs so that the writers are assured confidentiality and so colleges get an honest assessment of the student’s abilities/personality.</p>

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<p>Why don’t you say one of the summer program asked son about differences between letter and application?</p>

<p>Don’t bring up you opened letter, but you are afraid there might be some confussion. Email the teacher a resume of sons to refresh memories and a copy of one of the applications. </p>

<p>Our hs teachers would never right any kind of rec letter without a resume because of just this kind of possible mess.</p>

<p>Letters a sealed so they are supposedly more honest, but as you can see, oops.</p>

<p>My idea is that the letters should be sent dicrectly by the teacher and s copy given to student. But unless envelope is all stamped with a wax seal over it it’s easy enough to open.</p>

<p>You could also tell gc you opened envelope while doing cleaning and recyling, you read and is a mess. you were torn what to do, but cats outof the bag.</p>

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<p>^ Don’t think this is a good idea. If I were the teacher I would want to know who to speak with at the program that identified the differences so I can correct my mistake. What are you going to say then? This runs the risk of lies begetting other lies. If I were the teacher and discovered this new lie and found out it was to cover for the opening a sealed letter of recommendation, I would report it to the GC and request it be noted on the student’s record of some sort.</p>

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<p>@starbright:</p>

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As I already stated in the opening post, “I am not going to debate if it was the right thing to do.” </p>

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In this situation, I beg to differ. I certainly did not compromise anybody’s image like the other party did, nor do I intend to, regardless of what happened.</p>

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Those volumes must be really low: nowhere did I state that I would not consider letting the teacher know, if I really have to. That I would prefer to be more gentle about it, that is entirely another matter. </p>

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It is also assumed by those soliciting your LORs that you are a person of integrity who will not harm their interests unnecessarily in important applications, and that you will stay true to the facts, whatever those may be. Right to confidentiality does not supersede fairness, integrity, etc.</p>

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Actually this is one of 4 copies DS requested at various times, 3 of which have been mailed properly. I don’t think the teacher waisted time in any way.</p>

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Nowhere did I say “red flags”. I said “puzzling flags” and “subtle flags”. Please note the difference. I may question the reliability of the teacher at this point, but the entire idea of starting this discussion was to figure out a way to solve the problem in the most civil way possible. Check my first post, please.</p>

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That is not necessarily a norm, even if it looks so. It became eventually a convenient rule of etiquette meant to attest to the integrity of both the solicitor and the recommender. IMO, what I did is actually more of a breach of etiquette. Even if you insist on looking at it as a norm, it does not give the teacher the liberty to freely make blatant and costly mistakes, IMHO. Wherefrom the entire problem.</p>

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May I ask what exactly would you want to protect the teacher from? I don’t see where did I ever threatened him or anybody else at any point.</p>

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<p>Are you trying to say that you think he botched it on purpose?</p>