These are provided, somewhat, in jest. They are fairly well-known examples of how to subtly slam a candidate without being overt. They’re better known in HR/employment circles.
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Interesting! I have been employed for decades*, in a hiring manager role both writing and reading LORs, and I’ve never seen such. Or written any, needless to say. Damning with faint praise is certainly the norm.
*Retired last month though
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School related ECs that are not referenced by any recommender.
That doesn’t seems like something that can be universally applied—for example, for students that go to a public school, it would be surprising if an applicant’s religious EC was mentioned.
And even for subjects that are tied to the school’s offerings, you’re not going to necessarily get a mention in a recommendation—for example, a student whose ECs are centered around the fine arts (e.g., drama, music) but the college requires LoRs from teachers in so-called academic subjects, and the recommender (reasonably) discusses only what they have direct experience with.
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Then the counselor would mention the school-related ECs, if the teacher could not.
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You’re assuming a counselor that doesn’t have responsibility for (looks up the number for my C25’s high school) 350 students.
School counselors aren’t the first thing cut when school budgets get tight, but they’re pretty early on the list.
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Colleges know that prep school kids will have good recommendations. They also know that under resourced schools with one CG per 250 kids is going to be non-specific.
The big red flag IMO is overuse of superlatives. The kid won a school contest and calls themself the winner when the contest also has a state and national component. The letter that states a kid is outstanding without citing specifics.
I’d also imagine that anything that hints that the kid does well by grinding out the grades rather than working efficiently and easily is going to hurt in competitive programs.
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Oh, absolutely, no argument with that.
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Do you do 30-50 of them in a month like many hs teachers are asked to do? Do you do them for people you may not have know for more than a few months?
I think people expect too much out of high school teachers who may not write for a living (the math teacher or bio teacher).
My kids didn’t need them for admissions but one needed two for a scholarship. She was very lucky to have a good relationship with the AP world history teacher who wasn’t asked for as many letters as the English teachers. I don’t even remember who wrote the second rec. They had only been at the school for 1 year so didn’t have as many options as some of the other students.
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That is why HS teachers shouldn’t be expected to write more than 3 to 5 letters, especially in a 1 month period, if you expect them to write meaningful LoR’s. I had my kids talk to the teachers they wanted LoR’s from prior to summer of senior year.
As mentioned upthread, it is better for a teacher to tell the student they don’t have the time, than to take on the job and write a generic LoR. I am referring to the situations where the student is getting LoR’s for highly selective colleges where LoR’s can make a significant difference.
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There are, of course, red flags that are only red flags for some universities, like having these in your ECs:
- For Liberty University - “Leadership position in the International Union of Socialist Youth”
- For Yeshiva University - “a year as a missionary in Africa”
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Repeating, but with a broader scope, something that I mentioned recently upthread: It’s interesting (and this isn’t a passive-aggressive swipe, I mean interesting very literally here) that much of this discussion assumes teachers and counselors and others associated with running high schools (and even college admissions offices) have a solid amount of time to spend on non-instructional tasks and/or are involved with relatively few students.
This is the case for heavily resourced private schools and (more and more rarely) heavily resourced public school districts, but it isn’t the case for the vast majority of HS students out there, including the vast majority of students applying to high-prestigiosity colleges.
Fortunately, college AOs are—at least usually—well aware of that. So just throwing that out there as a caution for anyone making blanket claims about anything involving bits of applications that come from HS staff.
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My kids’ school makes the juniors attend college recruiting sessions in spring of junior year to explain what’s coming in the fall. Right away at the start of school the seniors get a sheet to fill out (by Oct 10 or so) where they have to list all the LoR and transcripts they’ll need, when they are due and who is writing them. Anything not submitted on that form may not happen, depending on teacher and counselor workload. It’s harsh but allows EA and ED docs to be done first and later work to be deferred safely.
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This is much too late, there are schools with Oct 15th deadlines (which require all supporting materials in by that day too). This is the perfect example of what dbfddb is saying above. It is relatively few schools that have been able to keep up with the changes in college admissions, including significant volume and timeline changes.
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Of course, then some students get rationed out of what could be their best possible LoRs if they did not realize that getting them was competitive or required very early asking for.
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For most colleges, such letters are irrelevant anyway. For the small percentage of schools that care, they have admissions officers prepared to differentiate among letters from an elite prep school ( where not having an amazing letter speaks volumes) and a poor public school.
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So 5 kids get great letters and the other 95 kids that teacher has get nothing? A transfer student has no chance at all?
The kid I referred to above went to a public school, but a very elite one in a Philly suburb. There just isn’t a way to get the 500+ kids in the senior class letters if every teacher is only writing 5 or even 10. A top high school here has about 850 in the graduating class and I’d guess 800 go on to 4 year colleges. I think there are 9-10 guidance counselors (for the entire school, so 3500 kids), some devoted to athletes. Lots of kids going to Ivies and Stanford and Cal and the service academies. There is no way each teacher gets to pick the 5 students he likes best or who asked first. I’m sure most teachers are writing at least 30 letters, most of them in Sept and Oct.
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That’s what the spring meeting is about. There aren’t that many EA/ED kids with the early dates and they were told to get going earlier than the forms. The teachers know that the early stuff for the top kids is special but there’s a limited amount of it. Honestly the kids are told that they should reach out to AP and Honors teachers in the spring/summer if possible to get the best letter. The forms are to manage the bulk of the kids doing RA apps.
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Metacomment: This whole thread is, all by itself, a good argument against letters of recommendation.
Like, a seriously good argument.
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So I imagine for those types of schools where the teachers are expected to write 30 letters in 1 or 2 months, you will get a majority templated letters. In the grand scheme of things, they probably won’t hurt, but they will unlikely be the factor that gets an average excellent kid over the top when we are talking the highly selective schools. You might get a more personalized letter if the teacher really feels the kid truly is one of the best he/she has/has ever taught, or if the kid was savvy and reached out prior to the rush.
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I hear you, but at our community well resourced HS, around 80% of the 1,000 students per class apply to at least one school early or rolling.
Another example for this thread…Wake Forest has rolling ED and that app opens in the summer. It’s only well resourced schools that can get all the supporting materials out then, and there is a clear benefit to getting that ED app in as early as possible.
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