<p>How much does it help when applying to Cornell?</p>
<p>If you take a challenging course, it could help. But it’s not going to be the major thing they look at (unless it connects with your mission). Understand that it won’t HURT you to NOT take it.</p>
<p>say you do summer college at cornell - if you establish a really good relationship with a professor or you impress him/her a lot and then they write a recommendation letter for you… it’d DEFINITELY help you.</p>
<p>…assuming that you apply to cornell, of course. and the same goes for any college. if you do a summer college program with that college and you end up applying to said college, if a professor likes/remembers you, it’d help. a lot.</p>
<p>That’s assuming that the professor HAS an influence on the admissions process, however. I would grant that it MAY have an influence, though.</p>
<p>okay, more of an influence than any other person’s recommendation (unless it’s an influential famous person - ie: political figure, hotshot ceo, etc).</p>
<p>Actually, I’m going to have to disagree here. I think that admissions would put more emphasis on a recommendation from a person who has worked and interacted with the applicant for a semester, or even a year, than that of a single summer session professor who may have limited contact with the student.</p>
<p>but at the same time, colleges already don’t put that much emphasis on recs just because they know that students (or at least the ones who aren’t out to sabotage themselves) will ask for recommendations from teachers who they know like them and will give them glowing recommendations. </p>
<p>idk, i’d trust the word of someone who actually works for the college itself over just another high school teacher. keep in mind, however, summer sessions do offer you the chance of getting close with a professor and potentially doing some research with him/her. i know a kid who didn’t have stellar grades but got into UPenn (wharton) because he did a summer session and impressed the professor teaching his classes so much that he was offered the chance to do research with the professor - who then wrote an amazing recommendation letter for him. this might have just been a singular case though - but i still believe that a professor’s rec > h.s. teacher’s rec</p>
<p>so i guess, ThePhilosopher, we’ll have to agree to disagree.</p>
<p>I think the quality of the rec outweighs the person who wrote the rec. Get the best written rec you can, and go from there, regardless of if it is a summercol prof or not. As far as SC helping if you do not get a rec, well… it simply does not. The program is mainly a educational/marketing tool to get more kids to apply/attend cornell, and to show kids what the school is like. The purpose is the help the student gain more knowledge about cornell, not to pre screen potential applicants.</p>