I think you are right, that each student isn’t getting a 3 hour letter. However, this school here sends a lot of kids to Ivies, Stanford, Duke. Some are athletes, but a lot are just smart kids. This school is in one of the richest districts in the state, but the school can only afford so many GC and each AP Lang teacher probably has 100+ students to deal with (each and every one heading to college).
If they are getting into Ivies with ‘template’ recommendations, does that mean that the recs don’t mean that much? Does it mean that the AOs just compare the recs from the same type of school --boarding school v boarding school, Country Day school v. Country Day school, big suburban public school v big suburban public school?
I do believe that recs still can make a difference for some kids. For a teacher who writes 30+ LoR’s, I assume they are not equally glowing. They can’t say every kid was the “best” or even “one of the best” whatever student in their class. I can easily imagine they just go through the motions for some students. There must be a smaller number of truly “favorite” students each year. I suspect also for popular teachers in schools such as yours that have a lot high achieving high aspirational students year to year, they are also probably more proficient in banging out letters that hit the right points.
AO’s of holistic schools are certainly comparing across “like” schools and students, whether it is course rigor, grades, tests scores, EC’s or LoRs. Also remember most AO’s are set up with first readers responsible for defined geographic areas. I would not be at all surprised that there is one first reader from each college for your HS (city or larger geographical area), so they will be able to compare LoR’s among the students at your HS applying to that school. If I were a reader, I’d be very interested in what a particular LoR writer says about each student for whom they are writing an LoR that is applying to my school.
Yes, as someone who does this for a living, I have been asked to write student essays.
I’ve also seen more than a few essays clearly written by parents. In fact, one student told me point blank that her dad had written it. She didn’t tell me until after I asked her. It was comically bad, written with a particular Ivy League school in mind.
I’ll attempt to recreate the opening sentences here:
Since the dawn of time [inspired by @MWolf , thanks!], mankind has pondered the deeper meaning of his own existence. In the words of the great thinker Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” And Descartes’ profound, yet elementary musing of “Cogito, ergo sum” is the life tenet which we must all strive to fulfill… Ivy League U is the place to help me do that!
yada yada…
Needless to say, this kind of essay will 200% raise red flags. I always tell my students that aiming for perfection will result in a less credible essay and that I will not help them do that.
“I’ve always wanted to” is fantastic when it refers to something that a teenager would actually want to do. When it’s coupled with “work as an investment banker in M&A, which is why Wharton is my first choice” it’s kind of hilarious. Or just a plain vanilla red flag!
Another big red flag is unable to pay. Especially, for those much loved private schools that offer holistic admissions and >50% of the students are full pay with a $80K price tag.
Well, it could mean a parent typed it! I’ll never be able to drop the ‘two spaces after a period’ but would expect if I were cheating by writing my child’s essays or course work the child would at least retype it.
Back in the day, between the time when typing was taught and the time when most things went online, parents who had learned typing skills when they were in high school or college, may have helped by typing out a kid’s hand-written essay.
However, today, most kids are better at typing out their work on a computer than they are at hand writing their work. This is especially true for kids who are from the type of households in which parents are likely to be writing the essay for the kid.
I expect that we will no longer see parents double spacing after a period on parent-written essays as the parents increasingly are Millennials.
“When not working on my non profit or practicing oboe, I spend 20+ hours per week on College Confidential posting chance me threads and asking how to improve my ECs.”
