<p>Hi CC folks, i'm in month 8 of conversation here...I joined to help my junior D get into a good college . Here's what I've learned 1) my kid is not a special snowflake and likely won't get into any of the colleges we planned on 8 months ago. LOL 2) even if she got in, we couldn't afford it anyway and 3) I've already practiced my speech to kid next year...along the lines of 'the school you got into is actually pretty good and it’s really more about what you put into the experience than anything"....even if that school turns out to be out by the highway of the outer perimeter.</p>
<p>So now i turn to recommendation letters. </p>
<ol>
<li>When colleges ask for 2 recommendations, are they usually asking for 1 teacher & then the guidance counselor?</li>
<li>What if that guidance counselor is the only one for 300 seniors and likely won't do anything but scratch out something. Even then?</li>
<li>Say that your kid applies to 9 colleges....7 on common app & 2 with independent apps. Does that mean the targeted teacher writes one letter for the "7" colleges and then must write unique letters for the other 2? How in the heck do they find time to do this? (see earlier note about 300 seniors).</li>
</ol>
<p>I'm sure I"ll have more questions...im starting slow....</p>
<p>1/ In general, colleges will be very specific about who they want letters of recommendation from and how many LOR’s they require. That info will be on their admissions website.</p>
<p>2/ Particularly with large public HS, college admissions officers will have experience with receiving boilerplate recommendations. There’s nothing you can really do about this.</p>
<p>3/ Basically, yes. However, I think in many cases, the teacher will write the LOR in MSWord, and may or may not tweak it for the selected university. She will then just attach it to the recommendation. The check boxes are pretty standard, and take 3 seconds to do. As for workload, I would think that this takes less time than years ago when every college had its own app.</p>
<p>at our HS the teachers write <em>ONE</em> recommendation. It gets “loaded” into the Naviance system, and the guidance counselor “pushes the button” to send it off to however many schools you’ve applied to. As for the GC, our school solicits “parent input” about the child. So if you’re smart, you will “write the rec for them”, or at least make it easy for them to cut and paste.</p>
<p>It works similarly with the CA, teachers are ‘invited’ by the student, and they upload their LOR. When the student sends the CA to a school(s), they will designate which LOR(s) to submit.</p>
<p>Usually when a school asks for 2 LORs, they mean from teachers. The counselor’s note is not part of that number. Don’t worry about the GC’s rec. Colleges know that this often, is not very deep and your kid won’t be penalized because of this. Finally (when I was applying shortly after the earth’s mantle cooled), before the CA or Naviance, it was perfectly acceptable to Xerox a single written LOR and send it to multiple schools. </p>
<p>One thing that hasn’t been brought up yet is that every student asking for recs should ask the teacher(s) whether they can write a positive letter. This is always appropriate, phrased politely of course. For example, “Am I a student you would write a strong letter of reccomendation for, or do you suggest I ask someone else?” Don’t argue or question why if the answer is ask someone else, simply to thank the teacher for their honest answer. There is no shame or dishonor in deliberately selecting those who hold a favorable opinion to write a rec.</p>
<p>While it can be uncomfortable for a student to ask a direct question like this to a teacher, it HAS to be done. I know someone who was on the alumni scholarship committee for a well-known U and they regularly received letters of “rec” for the full-tuition scholarship that raked the kid over the coals. In “The Gatekeepers”,in which a NY Times reporter followed the admissions committee at Wesleyan for a year, is a real-world example of a bad rec. Obviously when the student asked for a rec she assumed it would be positive, but here is what she got:
This could have been avoided if the teacher had been asked if they would write a strong rec. The student did not get in. </p>