I took a Harvard summer course. The Prof (with inputs from TF) wrote a LoR. Obviously due to FERPA waiver, I don’t know what exactly he wrote, but I am hoping it was good based on my 1+ year post-course communication with him and TF.
Would this help in any way?
Well, it won’t hurt. Will it give you an extra boost? Doubtful.
Thanks @skieurope. Anyone else with inputs?
If you received an A or A- it could help a little. However Harvard summer school program for HSers can be seen as an expensive privilege for wealthy kids, rather than a particularly unique EC which shows passion or a commitment to community.
That statement implies the professor did NOT know you well enough to write a recommendation on their own.
Fact: Over 1,000 high school students attend Harvard Summer School.
Conjecture: My guess would be that 20% of high school students who attended Harvard summer school apply to Harvard as freshman applicants. Of those approximate 200 students, maybe one-quarter to one-half of them (50 to 100) receive a LoR from their professor.
Further conjecture: If other summer school students took a seminar-type class with about 15 students, where the professor personally got to know them and their work, those other student’s recommendations might outshine yours, as their professors didn’t need input from a TF to write it.
My guess: Your LoR from a Harvard professor (who taught a large enough class to need a TF) is not going to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.
While I agree with @gibby , I just need to point out that some smaller HSS seminars have TF’s as well.
@gibby and @skieurope - thank you. I have already submitted the recs, so I know I can’t change anything. However, just curious to know if only 50 - 100 out of 30,000 applicants are getting a rec from a Harvard Prof, would that not at least be a small plus?
^^ As with all recommendations, it depends on what the professor actually says. For example, if a high school student took a Harvard Summer School course and enrolled in a small humanities seminar with about 15 students, all of whom were graduate students or Harvard college upperclassman, and that high school student’s writing was of such superior quality that the professor personally held it up each week as an example of the kind of thought provoking discussion he expected from all of his students – well that high school student is going to get a far different (read better) recommendation than a student who received an A- in basic chemistry. And when Admissions reads a stellar recommendation like that, yes it will have an impact over a student who was just merely competitive in the summer school pool of students.
What respondents are saying is that the writer is not as important as what YOU did in front of the writer and how he/she conveys it. An enthusiastic 2nd year new teacher’s observations and anecdotes in a letter about you is 8000x better than a cursory rec letter from a Harvard prof during a summer class.
The rec is about YOU, not who writes it. Many applicants fail to understand this distinction and send in LORs from their State Senator or dad’s friend who’s a tech company executive or Aunt Susie, an alumna of some prestigious college.