<p>How important do you think letters of recommendations are in the college admissions process? Let's say you have great stats, outstanding extracurricular activities, and only good-but-not-amazing teacher recommendations. How much would that hurt you? Is it enough for a college to reject you?</p>
<p>Recommendation letters are given a good amount of weight. If you go through the common data sets for each of the colleges you’re interested in, recommendations are usually ranked as “important” or “very important.”</p>
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<p>Of course not.</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>Another question, is it a bad idea to ask your senior year teachers to write you letters of recommendation? Since you know, they’ve only known you as a student for a couple of months when you’re applying?</p>
<p>There’s an entire thread in this forum all about teacher recommendations. The answer to your second question is: It depends. It’s true that they’ve only known you for a couple of months, but if they think that you’re an excellent student, they could write very good recommendation letters.</p>
<p>To answer your 1st question, all anyone can say is “it depends”. At the most selective schools the strongest applicants have top stats, ECs, essays, and recs. A weakness in any of these areas reduces the chances of getting in, and when you’re admitting 1 out of every 10 applicants you can bet this happens.</p>
<p>You want teachers to be willing and able to write you a strong letter of rec. So it is very important to ask a prospective evaluator whether they can write a positive letter for you. This is always appropriate, phrased politely of course. EVERY student should do this when asking for letters of rec. 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.</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 really dissed the kid. In the book “The Gatekeepers” in which a reporter for the NY Times followed the admissions committee at Wesleyan (a top LAC) for a year is a real-world example of a bad rec.
If Tiffany had asked the teacher if he’d write a strong letter of support for her, this could have been avoided. The end result was she did not get in.</p>
<p>they’re important, but the counselor rec(at least from a trusted counselor) may be more important, because it puts your whole profile in context.</p>
<p>needless to say, i think it’s rare that a teacher rec will decide the outcome for your file, unless you truly inhibited the learning of others in the class, or fantastically facilitated it. it’s just a way to see what you’re like in class.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone.</p>
<p>@dchow08: Where is that thread all about teacher recommendations?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/386669-asking-recommendations.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/386669-asking-recommendations.html</a></p>
<p>im pretty sure that i only got good-not-great rec’s, and i did well in the college admissions process so i wouldnt worry about it.</p>
<p>I think you get rejected if you have bad recs.</p>
<p>I took classes at my local county college in Italian, in addition to my all-AP courseload in school. I asked my Italian teacher from county college to write my recommendation–does this look bad since I didn’t ask a teacher from my own school?</p>