<p>How much does a recommendation from a professor at that college help a student gain admission to a top school?</p>
<p>Depends how good the recommendation is.</p>
<p>What if a student doesn’t know the professor well but s/he thinks the student would be beneficial to the department? I am just curious whether an offered recommendation is extraneous and unnecessary or worthwhile.</p>
<p>^In that case, why doesn’t the professor just contact the admissions office more casually. Recs are best for disclosing personal qualities; whether or not you fill an institutional need is another matter entirely, though still one the adcoms could be notified of through other means.</p>
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<p>How can the professor make any statement about his or her benefit to the department if he or she does not know the student well? It might hurt the student if the professor contacts admissions and obviously does not know the student well–particular if it’s a case of the student’s parents knowing the professor and indirectly or directly asking for a favor.</p>
<p>Ha. This has nothing to do with the student’s parents. Basically, I’m just saying the student does not know the prof as well as a year long teacher would know him. The prof just offered to send a additional rec to admissions or something like that - the student def. knows the prof. through academic programs. I’ll tell him that a note would be better than an official rec.</p>
<p>I guess I was just a little freaked out when my friend told me this. I didn’t think it was normal for professors to recommend students. He was unsure whether he should accept the rec., and my ambivalence didn’t help.</p>
<p>I had a rec from the chair of the department of my proposed major at Brown. Rejected!
Don’t think I was totally unqualified, either. And it was sent to other places, where it seems that it couldn’t have hurt.
Anyway, I guess the lesson here is that it’s not a guarantee. Nothing is ever a guarantee. But it probably wouldn’t impact you negatively, assuming it doesn’t say something terrible.</p>