<p>“Often faculty value merit students. Adcoms - are just a barrier, one more hoop to jump.”</p>
<p>Adcoms don’t have magical powers nor do they work in a vacuum. They work to advance the mission and goals of the overall college. The college’s strategic planners determine what they want in their student body and consequently what they want the adcom to look for and value, and the adcoms execute against that strategy. </p>
<p>If faculty is supposedly SOOOOOO upset about the low caliber of incoming students and believes “the best are going elsewhere,” they are, of course, free to take that up with their employer. If they don’t - then they aren’t leaders in the least and they deserve what they get. This is the way normal people work in the world, californiaa. Faculty who don’t like something tell their college so, and if it’s not resolved to their satisfaction, they vote with their feet and move elsewhere. </p>
<p>You have so many misperceptions but the scarier thing is - you don’t seem willing to want to learn. I don’t care if you got 2400 on your SAT’s, that’s just not smart. </p>
<p>@californiaaa, I am not sure why you are so strongly opposed to letters of recommendation. After all, the faculty at the schools were also hired in part due to their letters of recommendation–should they just have been hired based on some kind of test? </p>
<p>Letters can say a lot about a student’s intellectual abilities that may not be apparent just from grades and test scores. You seem to think that grades are somehow objective, but in many schools, grade inflation is rampant, and letters may be the only way of distinguishing the in-school performance of 30 applicants who all have a 4.0. They probably also can help clarify a student’s role in various activities. They may have a prestigious prize or award, but the letter may say what their contribution really was–did they ride the coattails of others on the team or were they the driving force behind it?</p>
<p>Thank you. Letters of recommendation for grad students and faculty are different. Typically, recommender says that 1) I worked with this person 2) from my experience, this person has certain skills, 3) I’ll, personally, recommend this person to you. It makes sense.</p>
<p>I don’t understand what a teacher may write in rec letter. First, they have too many kids. Second, they write almost hundred letters, every year. Doesn’t seem like they can make anything meaningful or personal. </p>
<p>In an “adult world” you ask for recommendation letter. If a person agrees to provide one, they will write something nice. Otherwise, they find an excuse not to write. It is not a recommendation letter, but a letter of support. </p>
<p>@Nrdsb4
"Harvard is happy with how their classes are chosen. "</p>
<p>Lots of faculty at Harvard is NOT happy about students that are chosen for them. Especially STEM faculty. Believe me, I know it for the fact.</p>
<p>I think CC posters mistakenly think that Harvard adcoms represent Harvard. This is not the case. STEM faculty “reselects” their students, from the pool that adcoms send them. Same goes for the most popular majors, in any college. There is a second round of selection, at the level of major. </p>
<p>Grad students are most important for faculty, not undergrads. Adcoms in Harvard have almost zero power to choose grad students. Faculty often selects grad students themselves. (holistic approach is not popular). </p>
<p>“The college’s strategic planners determine what they want in their student body and consequently what they want the adcom to look for and value, and the adcoms execute against that strategy.”</p>
<p>In other words, bureaucrats are make decisions about future of science. Based on politically correct and socially justified policy. </p>
<p>Luckily, Harvard is more than adcoms strategy. </p>
<p>"If faculty is supposedly SOOOOOO upset about the low caliber of incoming students and believes “the best are going elsewhere,” they are, of course, free to take that up with their employer. "</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Faculty minimizes interactions with undergrads. You can read again and again about this phenomena (“Profs. don’t want to teach undergrads!”)</p></li>
<li><p>Faculty hires and teaches grad students. Without input from adcoms. Lots of grad students are internationals. Most are selected on merit based criteria. (including recommendation letters and publications). </p></li>
</ol>
<p>“If they don’t - then they aren’t leaders in the least and they deserve what they get.”</p>
<p>Faculty just distance itself from undergrads that they don’t like. It is the easiest solution.</p>
<p>Next, you find posts from parents “I can’t find a mentor for my D/S”! This college doesn’t provide adequate access to the labs"! “Prof. don’t teach, most of the work is done by TAs”!</p>
<p>"I don’t understand what a teacher may write in rec letter. First, they have too many kids. Second, they write almost hundred letters, every year. " You say “you don’t understand.” But you don’t ask questions. You just make up straw men and declare that they are true. Is that what “smart” people do?</p>
<p>Btw, there’s a world outside of STEM and outside of graduate school. I have two kids in elite schools right now. Neither is STEM and neither are planning on graduate school. So why should I care what STEM professors looking for graduate students think about anything? It’s not that STEM is more important or that grad education is more important than undergrad education.</p>
<p>Here’s the bottom line. Let’s take, say, the top 30 universities and liberal arts colleges. Most people would agree that they all provide fine educations. Yet you will only “consider” a handful - Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA (that one is out of left field), Harvard, maybe Columbia or Duke, whatever. Are you bothering to learn about any of the others that are unfamiliar to you? Or are you just going with “schools I’ve heard of” and ignoring the rest? Is that the smart thing to do, or a dumb thing to do?</p>
<p>Californiaa, If the Harvard faculty supposedly are so indifferent to undergraduates, why do you want to send your child there? The students are dumb, the faculty indifferent to undergraduates, the weather wretched. I don’t get your logic. It’s amusing, but really . … </p>
<p>The vast majority of students don’t need teacher recommendation letters when applying to college, especially here in California. UC and Cal State don’t accept them. I’d expect that’s true at many public colleges and universities. </p>
<p>Teachers at high schools that send lots of students to private colleges may write dozens of recommendations a year, but writing anywhere near a hundred a year would be highly unusual. One of the standing pieces of wisdom here on CC is to ask your teachers in April or May of your high school senior year to write recommendations. Ask at the start of your senior year, and you risk being told “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to write any more recommendations”. </p>
<p>Sure, some of those recommendations are going to be impersonal and not anything to the application. Others are meaningful and insightful. Whenever college admissions folks visited D1’s high school, they would always ask to meet two or three particular teachers because those teacher’s recommendations were AMAZING. D2 goes to a teeny high school where the teachers know every student intimately. Both D’s were admitted ED to schools that stress holistic admissions. At a large public school, a high-achieving student who makes an effort to interact with the teacher should be able to get the same kind of personal rec letter. Having a teacher write that a student is the best (or among the top few) they’ve seen in decades of being in the classroom is incredibly powerful. </p>
<p>If you’re talking about the counselor rec letter, then yes, the counselor may have to write hundreds and then it can be perfunctory. At some schools, the counselors do make the push to write effective letters. Others will ask parents and students for help–D1’s school, for instance, asked parents to submit anecdotes and adjectives that would help “define” their kid. Pro tip: calling your child “perfect” ain’t helpful.</p>
<p>Yes. They also distance themselves from GRAD STUDENTS and fellow faculty that they don’t like. How on earth do you think hiring and tenure decisions are made? Purely on “merit”? Bwa-hahahahahaha!!!</p>
<p>It is bizarre how you make such broad, sweeping statements as though they are facts and which can be patently false.</p>
<p>My Ds attended a private all girls prep school. The teachers have maybe 10-15 kids per class, sometimes less. Often they will have taught the girls more than once during their time at the school. They get to know these girls very very well. They can give quite “meaningful” and “personal” information in their letters. </p>
<p>In a large high school, it may be more difficult to forge relationships with teachers, but I think it is highly likely that any candidate who is so accomplished as to be considered by a school like Harvard is going to stand out even in a large class. If a very smart student adds something extra to class discussions, possesses qualities which display leadership skills, or brings something unique and beyond the pale to the table, this can be a valuable addition to their application because it reveals something about the kid which is more than numbers on a piece of paper.</p>
<p>The fact that you “don’t understand” the value of LORs doesn’t invalidate them.</p>
<p>I am an AP teacher at a top tier public high school in a major urban area - the stereotype district where people move for the great schools etc… I generally write 10 or so recommendations a year. Some of those kids I know incredibly well- others less so- and I say that in the letter. Teaching all advanced classes- EVERY kid I have is bright…not all of them are hardworking- and I think THAT is what colleges really want to know. Grades and test scores offer so called “objectivity” (though I fully support earlier comments about issues with objectivity and relevance of grades/scores) but what colleges want to know about attitude, because that may mean the difference between success and failure at the university level. On the other hand- if a kid has a bad attitude- particularly an entitled attitude- and is applying to highly selective colleges -essays and interviews often to a much better job of revealing that than than I ever could…</p>
<p>If you had read the letters of recommendation my kids got, you would understand their value. We are from a mid to large sized high school - typical graduating class about 350. Typical class size is around 30. </p>
<p>The recommendations that came from teachers that my kids really got to know were fantastic. They were insightful, demonstrated an true understanding of the kids, gave insight to their personality and their work. Anyone who read those really got an accurate feel for who my kids are.</p>
<p>There were also recommendations from teachers that my kids weren’t very involved with (as necessitated by requirements of different scholarship programs). Those were much more generic and didn’t show any great insight. But those too must are valuable to readers. It was clear from reading those letters that the kids weren’t very involved with these people - exactly the correct information that (I imagine) would also provide insight into the student.</p>
<p>I asked about the counselor recs when we visited Harvard. The adcoms there told us that the counselor rec’s are used more to get a feel for the kids from an administrative POV. In other words, are there any health, disciplinary, personal issues that are relevant that would shed a new light on the application. Additionally they are there to highlight the rigor of the course load.</p>
<p>GC recommendations are not so much used as recommendation but more as back story.</p>
<p>FWIW, what I’ve read here on CC is that mentioning “hardworking” in a rec letter isn’t really a boost. Schools look at the grades and classes–that tells them that someone is hardworking, or hardworking enough. If you have two students taking the most rigorous classes, both with high grades, but one is working really hard to get to that level and the other one isn’t…well, which one would you want to admit? The one who is already going all out, or the one who still has power left to spare under the hood?</p>
<p>@mamalion
I don’t say that all Harvard faculty is indifferent to all Harvard undergrads. I say that many majors re-select undergrads that are supplied by adcoms. And they use different criteria than adcoms do. </p>
<p>Adcom selection is just another hoop for me. I don’t assume that all Harvard students are great because they are Harvard. However, most Harvard students in STEM are very nice. And faculty is great. </p>
<p>"My Ds attended a private all girls prep school. "</p>
<p>How about 100 students per class per teacher (and teacher teaches several classes in HS)? How about the fact that most students want rec letters from the same teacher? </p>
<p>“any candidate who is so accomplished as to be considered by a school like Harvard is going to stand out even in a large class”</p>
<p>What if almost every kid in HS is applying to Harvard-Stanford-Berkeley-UCLA? (in our magnet school) What if most kids apply to STEM majors and ask teachers in math and science to provide rec letters? </p>
<p>@toowonderful,
"I generally write 10 or so recommendations a year. "</p>
<p>And what other kids are doing? If 90% of kids are applying to colleges … where do they get recommendation letters? I thought that teacher’s rec letter is a must … </p>