<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I have heard rumors that getting a recommendation of some sort from a current/past Stanford professor is almost 'guaranteed' admission Stanford. Is this true? Anybody have any experience with this sort of thing?</p>
<p>Positively untrue.</p>
<p>I got a rec from my Summer Physics Professor, sent it to MIT, HMC, and Stanford. Got rejected from all.</p>
<p>fontaine – Was the professor ex/current Stanford professor?</p>
<p>my h. a stanford prof, has written a rec letter for a student who got rejected so no guarantee there.</p>
<p>My friend from HSSC who did research for a physics professor during our program got a letter of rec from him and was rejected. Brilliant girl though, she’s at Caltech. But definitely not guaranteed admission.</p>
<p>They want letters of rec from teachers who know you for a good amount of time (semester to a year) and can write about you from a multi-faceted viewpoint. It’s up to you whether you think a Stanford professor fits that criteria or not.</p>
<p>This is interesting – I’ve seen the exact opposite. Pretty much everybody who’s gotten a <em>good</em> letter of recommendation from a current Stanford professor has gotten in, even with ~4.0 GPA (compared to some with 4.6 who got rejected).</p>
<p>Definitely not a guarantee.</p>
<p>I would guess it would greatly depend on what the professor had to say. If you did some extensive research in his/her lab that contributed to a paper that is in print at a top journal, it will be treated very differently from a letter from a professor who is a family friend, and doing your parents a favor by writing it.</p>
<p>nngmm – True, but how can they tell that a professor is friends with family, etc.?</p>
<p>The professor will not lie in the letter. If the student happened to work with a professor who is also a family friend, and the recommendation is based on the work the student had done, it won’t matter that they know each other outside of the university. But if all that the professor has to say is what s/he knows about the student based on social interaction with the family, the impact will be minimal, if at all.</p>