<p>What if you ask your teachers / counselor to write recommedations and the quality is not as good as you expected?
These are teachers who have known me since freshman year. I have kept in contact with them ever since.
However, their recommendations are very generic. They write "She is a hard worker. She has excellent grades. She participated in this and that. I highly recommend this student.", but nothing more.
Also, one teacher wrote directly on the Common Application Teacher Evaluation Form. She did not type the recommendation. Will colleges view this as "sloppy" or think that I do not care about the school? Should I ask her to type her recommendation? Or type it myself and have her sign it again? This seems kind of rude though, right?
Do recommendations have much impact on college admissions?
Can they make or break one's acceptance, especially at top LACs?</p>
<p>Recommendations can help and hurt you. If they are very generic and the teacher has nothing significant to add to the table, then it won’t be very helpful and won’t give u an extra push. However, if the teacher’s experience with you was worthwhile, then their writing will reflect that and get across to the adcoms. In terms of “sloppiness,” you cannot do anything about that becasue the college will understand it’s the teacher’s fault, not urs. You won’t come across as someone who doesn’t care, but the school might wonder whether you are truly a top student if thet eacehr didn’t bother to spend any worthwhile time on ur recommendation.</p>
<p>overall,r ecommendations aren’t that big of a deal…but they can give u the extra push thtat you need, so don’t totally look over them.they are very important at top schools.</p>
<p>Thanks :]
Any more thoughts?</p>