No*, which is part of why we decided not to send it.
*Aside from students who don’t meet the auto-admit stats thresholds, that is—but there’s a completely separate section for their essay.
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Oh boy, it is an interesting day: a different ivy sent a frankly somewhat pompous spam-email bragging about their mid-50% Sat and act scores for last year and how they went up from the prior year. But also mentions they are still TO for this cycle. Some schools are purposely not publishing data for these TO years; it is surprising to me to send an email which focuses on the #s up (of course they are up with TO) and yet also reminds TO: are they encouraging not submitting at the lower end? Why do they feel the need to brag about sky high ranges that are now even higher? That seems to be a way to scare off applicants?
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Many students who demonstrate interest in a school end up not applying. My guess is, this school wants to better understand the profile of such students and possibly gain insight into why they choose not to apply. It would help them improve their marketing.
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I have seen this often. Many of the schools use the same third party virtual tour tech.
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And now the University of Colorado Denver application is in!
UCDenver and MTSU are the two on her list that don’t require a rec letter from a teacher, so they were dead easy. D23’s going to ask her professor from her DE first-year composition class (who already wrote a rec letter for D23’s summer camp), and for a couple of them there’s an option to include a letter from someone like a music teacher, which could be useful scholarshipwise for the sort of programs she’s applying to.
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If the school’ss individual application does not have the essay on it, it is safe not to submit the essay through the Common Ap. My 19 was not a strong writer and she did not submit it 1/2 the schools she applied to, and she was accepted to all schools and is at her 1st choice school with an excellent scholarship. Middle TN is not a very competitive school. They will be fine.
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If it says optional on letters of rec or essay, my son plans to still submit since he is applying to many schools that require them so it’s not really extra work. At the Pitt Blue & Gold Day, they stressed that they really don’t need letters of recommendation (the reason she stated was that they are all usually glowing and they’d rather focus on other areas.) The essay is also optional but she encouraged students to submit as they can be important when they are “on the fence” about a candidate. So with mixed messages on “optional” seems to make sense to submit.
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Was that comment about the LOR from an AO or from a tour guide?
Schools are trying to create a diverse class. I think LOR provide insight into what type of student the applicant is in the classroom and how they might contribute to the campus community.
I know many of us wonder if we are doing too much of the leg work for college apps. However, I think most of us also agree that with big money on the line and some other quirks such as Tuition Exchange or employer benefits, we as parents have to be a bit more involved.
This week I went to a moms social night this week for one of my kids ECs. Oh my word. These moms knew every little detail about what the choices were and which kid voted for which choice, etc. Or what player is out this week and why so in so was chosen over their kid, etc. All I knew is what the end result would be and that my kid is happy and thriving.
I sat back wondering if these parents were going to give as much thought to college apps as they do their kids ECs.
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My experience is that for schools that say essays and recommendations are not required, they mean that. We have been down this rabbit hole too many times before. Congrats on the applications.
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I agree, and that’s part of why I disagree with the idea of the utility of LoRs entirely (as someone who writes a lot of them, for employment and graduate or professional programs).
There’s a lot of scholarship on LoRs, and how unconscious biases creep into them (women tend to be portrayed as diligent workers while men tend to be portrayed as brilliant thinkers, students of color more often have their accomplishments framed in terms of overcoming adversity or even internal weakness, and so on). Experienced LoR readers, in fact, are often able to tell a lot about the race, ethnicity, and gender of the subjects of even fully anonymized letters—and, frighteningly, this often happens unconsciously, which raises the possibility of biased readings even when there’s a conscious effort to read them without bias.
So yeah, I play the LoR game because that’s the system that students are caught up in—but honestly it needs to stop.
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university of pittsburgh doesn’t want LOR’s at all, even for Honors. I wonder how many other schools are like that. anyone know any?
it’s weird because I know my kid will have some great letters that she truly deserves, but then I know kids who are kind of duds who have gotten into top 10 schools, so obviously somebody was willing to write great LOR’s for them.
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Rutgers doesn’t take LORs either from what I remember.
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All of my kids’ (D21 and D23) schools want(ed) at least one LOR. But almost all were private and under 9k undergrads. I could be mistaken, but it seems bigger/public are the ones more likely not to want them.
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If they want good insight, the criteria for who writes them shouldn’t be so narrow — junior year academic teachers and a guidance counselor. At most public schools, if you didn’t do anything wrong your guidance counselor barely knows you exist. And how insightful can the teacher recs be when they have to churn out 100+ each because a small number of junior year English, Social Studies, Math and Science teachers have to write recs for 500+ kids? Why shouldn’t the recs come from the teachers or other non-family adults who had the best chance to see the kids shine?
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Teachers don’t have to write letters of rec for every kid who asks. Our teachers certainly don’t. Most have a limit well below 100 students because they care about writing quality LORs. A kid who asks too late in the semester may well be out of luck. And…teachers have their favorites. If a teacher can’t write a positive LOR, then they will decline the request.
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most of my 23 's school choices do not require them. I would imagine most say the exact same thing. places of employments also do not follow up with references anymore for that same exact reason
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And what of the guidance counselor letters? Many public schools have counselors with well over 100 kids per grade. And they typically don’t interact with the students if there’s not a problem. And turn over is high. One of my kids had four guidance counselors in four years. The one who wrote the letter had started a month before and never met her. And what if the junior year teachers are not the ones who had the most important interactions with the students? If they want insightful letters they should come from the educators and people who had the most profound experiences with the students. The current system seems more factory pro forma than legitimate evaluation tool. And massively advantages small private schools, unnecessarily.
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And massively advantages small private schools, by design.
There, FTFY.
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I saw something similar at, I think, Case Western. It astonished me. What do they do with all this data in the future? How long do they keep the data?
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