<p>Hi everyone! I've just started Senior year and will be applying to Yale for SCEA. There is one Professor/Interviewer who has offered to help me with my application by writing a glowing recommendation and personally advocating my case to the board of admissions. She is our close family friend whom I have gotten to know closely in that capacity, however, I haven't worked with her formally as a summer intern or anything of the sort. </p>
<p>I am unsure whether these would help me. Worse, I'm uncertain about whether this could potentially even leave a bad taste in colleges' mouths for trying to "circumvent" the process. Could this backfire?</p>
<p>(if it matters, I've also secured a recommendation from our country Prime Minister with whom I have worked closely over the past year and know extremely well. Perhaps this and that would be overdoing it and provide a backlash?)</p>
<p>This is a sticky situation and a tricky question (not to mention a long one!). I'd be forever grateful for any response. Thank you very much! =)</p>
<p>Supplemental recs are useful when they 1) come from someone who has information about you that no one else can provide and 2) include specific examples of your accomplishments and/or leadership. So yes to the rec from the Prime Minister. No to the rec from the professor/interviewer who is a close family friend. Putting in a good word for a candidate, i.e., attesting to your general intelligence, good character, strong work ethic, etc, doesn’t help your chances of admission. And the actions you describe could be perceived as an effort to peddle influence. Is she a Yale professor? A Yale alumni interviewer? I would think that if the latter, she’d have a better sense of her role in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick reply wjb. To clarify, she is currently a Professor who also does interviews for the admissions committee. “influence peddling” – that’s what I was worried it might come off as. Yet would a well-intentioned recommendation and advocate for my application really cause such a backlash? Is it really a risk?</p>
<p>Something does not compute here. Professors do not conduct admissions interviews for Yale. On-campus interviews (which are offered on a limited basis) are conducted by current Yale seniors, and off-campus interviews are conducted by alumni.</p>
<p>Too late to edit. In a similar post on the Harvard board, you describe the prof/interviewer as “a current Stanford Professor with close ties to both Harvard and Princeton.” You get more accurate answers if you provide accurate information. I stand by what I said initially: Supplemental recommendations, however well intentioned, are of no value if they don’t tell Admissions something new and specific about you. That you’re a fine kid from a fine family ain’t it.</p>