In my letter to Smith, I wrote about how kind my daughter was and that she had been a great support to me during difficult times.
This whole “it’s optional and won’t affect your child’s admission chances one way or the other” is just b.s. Why even ask for it if that’s the case? Anyone who gets the option is probably going to do it because, hey, a chance to brag, and you don’t want to miss an opportunity if handed one. My feeling regarding ANY piece of information for the admissions process for a school (application, LOR, essays, etc.): either make it a requirement or don’t ask for it at all. Putting it into that gray “optional” area makes it weird and puts too many questions in kids’ and parents’ minds.
I agree with Undercrackers that one should assume it’s mandatory. As with any part of the application, I would think the parent’s letter should provide information not presented elsewhere, or not presented in sufficient detail. So affirming that your student is bright and hard-working would not be particularly helpful in expanding the admission committee’s picture of the applicant, since presumably traits like intelligence and work ethic would already show up in their grades, scores and teacher recs. I think parents could write about ways in which they have seen their student grow, mature, or tackle some challenge in the past year or two, or else they could elaborate on some personal quality not as easily observed in the school context, which is what rosered55 did.
Sorry – this time it is not mandatory. I think the schools do it more to make the parents feel involved and to engender warm feelings for Smith. It would be so easy for a parent not very clued in to admissions to say something unhelpful, too. Everybody thinks there kid is a special snowflake. What we did do is have a very honest interaction with her GC about her strengths & weaknesses. Our GC was so much better equipped to communicate that appropriately without making a misstep. And I think lots of parents don’t do it for various reasons.
@dfbdfb beat me to it. I have sometimes suspected that this is a trap for the kind of people who claim to be “first gen college” when in fact they have two highly educated parents who went to school in another English-speaking country or were raised by highly educated grandparents.
However, I also think there are cases in which the kid has had a serious issue the school is unaware of…so a mother might admit that the dip in grades in 10th grade happened when dad was hospitalized with depression or the kid’s best friend committed suicide or the family was evicted from their home. Some parents seem to be more comfortable telling this sort of thing to a college administrator than a high school guidance counselor they might meet in the grocery store or church.
I also received an e-mail yesterday about writing a letter for my D. It definitely gave me a positive feeling about the school that they were interested in hearing from me. While I don’t think it will make a huge difference in their decision, it’s just one more piece of information to add to the pile when evaluating candidates holistically. D included an arts supplement with many of her applications. Again, it likely won’t make or break the decision, just something to add to their knowledge of her. All of the kids applying to elite colleges are smart and hard working, but there are many qualities that aren’t evident in an application package, even with multiple essays. While I’m a bit overwhelmed about how to share some of her unique qualities without going on and on, I’m looking forward to the task.
What if the guidance counselor or English teacher or math teacher isn’t a good writer? I’ve received a lot of notes from teachers and GC’s over the years with spelling and grammar mistakes, and I’m sure many LORs have been sent in with mistakes on them.
The parent will have known the child longer and more intimately than any other recommender and could certainly add insights that no one else would know about. I would view it as an opportunity to write about my child’s character. A strong work ethic could certainly be one aspect of that, but there are many other character traits that could be written about as well. Helpfulness, loyalty, tenacity, humor, etc. I would have absolutely taken that opportunity had it been an option. Just one other way to show a different aspect of an applicant.
Reed used to ask for a parent’s letter. They also asked applicants to submit a “graded essay” from a high school class. Those both may be “writing tests” of some kind. My mother wrote my letter to Reed; perhaps even hand-wrote it. As I recall, she seemed happy to do it. As a high school salutatorian who never had a chance to go to college, this was “her” application, so to speak. I sure wish I had a copy of that letter.
The school could be using the parent letter and the high school essay to confirm that the student wrote their own application essays, without too much “editing” or help from mom, among other things.
I’ve suspected the graded paper is to give the college an idea of how tough the high school is. If a graded essay gets an A plus, but isn’t very good and has lots of uncorrected errors in it, the college might assume that it’s a grade inflated high school. I also think that if the kid’s college admissions essay is much better written than the graded essay is that will raise doubts that (s)he wrote the admissions essay.
I don’t think mom’s letter will prove she wrote the admissions essay.
“I suspect it’s actually a way to get parents invested in their daughter’s application, and so maybe up the yield rate just a touch. But that’s just the cynic in me, really.”
Well, they have the data to run the statistical test, don’t they?
– Null hypothesis: Yield is unrelated to whether a parent wrote a letter.
– Alternative hypothesis: Yield is related to whether a parent wrote a letter.
My money is on the alternative hypothesis with @dfbdfb and @AboutTheSame. I’d also wager that the alternative is statistically significant at the 1% level. Best part: they don’t even have to read the letter to get the benefits of having the letter as a part of their process! A great case study awaits.
Now, having observed the admissions folks at Smith, I doubt they have run this particular analysis. In fact, they would probably recoil in horror at the thought of even tabulating the data to run this analysis. But, I wouldn’t put it past them to keep track of the parents with the best essays and then give out cupcakes, or something, on move-in day. Always the personal touch at Smith. I know some other schools that could learn a thing or two from the Smith admissions staff.
Joining with the other folks in this thread re: Smith and its parent letter. I thought it was clever, but, had no bandwidth to write one, and honestly was a little annoyed that they would even ask. Yeah, it was optional, but we knew that at some schools optional = required. So, I did not write it. She got in anyway, received a likely letter with a personalized note referencing her common app essay, was offered a stride scholarship, but ended up someplace else.
So the first generation person with non-English speaking parents whose parents asked an educated, bilingual friend to write the parent letter for them (telling the friend in their native tongue what they wanted to say), gets pegged as a liar because the parents wanted to do everything they could to present their letter in the best light?
OK.
@romanigypsyeyes, in all seriousness, I suspect they don’t even read them—I still maintain that it’s basically a yield management device.
I hope they read mine, it would only take them one to two minuets tops, It did feel great writing it. I figure they read them and share fun stories about them with each other rather than base their decision on them. I would venture to say one or two have some pretty unusual stories that might sway them.
@mamalion I don’t know the exact paperwork that was requested on the issue of single parenthood, but in our circle of friends, this is not unusual. It seems that a small but significant percentage of colleges are going “above and beyond” to document need and so trying to figure out of there is another parent “out there” who could be contributing money to the college finances. I saw a form that was particularly entertaining as it asked the noncustodial parent for information even when the single parent had reported that there was NO noncustodial parent. But there was another form for THAT situation too. I think it is useful to consider a positive reason that the college has made this request; in this case, it is out of fairness. They want to provide need-based financial support and they want to do due diligence to determine that need.
On the issue of the parent writing a letter about the student applicant - my sense is that this is just for added flavor and also another indication of demonstrated interest. In other words, not something that is held against the applicant in a substantive way if the parent does not write the letter, but something that could ever so marginally help the applicant if the parent DOES write the letter.
You know, it could be quite enjoyable to read a lot of these letters.
I’m with @dfbdfb and the others. It’s just a recruitment device. I suppose it is possible that there is a small possible upside. I don’t think there is any downside.
But then, that’s what I think about alumni interviews too.
I’d be more cynical if I wasn’t so jaded.
I wrote the letter to Smith as requested. It specifically said they were interested in what they would not hear from counselors, teachers, etc. Since the counselor/student ratio at D’s school is over 500/1, that meant I could write almost anything – her counselor met her the day she set up recommendation requests in Naviance. Regardless, it was fun to write, and I think I do see the connections among all of her various courses and extra-curriculars that none of the individual teachers would “get.” Also, it was my opportunity to point out what a nerdy non-partier she is, which is another thing teachers don’t necessarily know. If they read it, do you think they believed me?
She got in on an early write, but her stats were in the zone for Smith anyway.
As an aside, we did an all-day session at Smith, and I found the admissions staff to be friendly and pretty interested in engaging parents. Then the Dean of Admissions gets up in front of the crowd and tells everyone that parents suck the life out of kids’ essays, LOL. They don’t seem overtly tricky or manipulative, but @dfbdfb could have a point that they see parent engagement increasing yield.