<p>Okay, so what is considered a good teacher recommendation? Do the recommendations need to have the "One of the top few of my career" checked off for all the boxes?</p>
<p>All of my teacher recommendations have those checked off and so does my counselor one, but I don't know what the content of the recommendations are. I'm hoping they're insightful.</p>
<p>But hypothetically, let's say the recommendations were pretty standard...like blah blah blah she's an awesome student....blah blah she has awesome leadership skills...blah blah here's a little anecdote...etc. etc. But "One of the top few of my career" is checked off for all of them. Does that make the recommendation stand out? Or are most applicants' recommendations going to have that checked off as well? Are a person's chances increased when all the teachers/counselor check that off?</p>
<p>I realize how stupid my questions are. But I just want to feel a little bit more secure because when people say "My teacher recommendations are glowing..." I don't know by who's standards or by what standards.</p>
<p>Also, is a really long teacher recommendation a bad thing? By long, I mean 3 pages. Yeah, my teacher is excessive.</p>
<p>A 3 page rec from a teacher? He/she must really like you. Normally if a teacher spends that much time on a student recommendation, that reflects greatly upon you. As for the other things, only an adcom member will know that stuff for fact. I can only tell you what i've heard/read... </p>
<p>I don't think it is necessary that all your teachers have to check off the "one of the best in my career" boxes for your recommendation to be worth something. The marks are more of guidelines; i bet they don't pay attention to them nearly as much as the content of the actual recommendation.</p>
<p>Yours will stand out. The keywords you REALLY want to have are things like "best of my career" or "best in the past five years" or even "best this year." "One of the best this year" isn't too bad.</p>
<p>no recommendations really don't do anything except give the adcom assurance about a certain applicant. nothing really can stand out, because teachers always right "best of my career" and stuff like that. its all bogus and illegit. they just dont wanna see bad stuff in your rec.</p>
<p>Not true. At my children's high school, teachers are coached very specifically on phrases to use. "Best of my career" and the like can be used only very sparingly. Ad. officers get to know individual teachers, and they are quick to recognize and discount that sort of thing.</p>
<p>Hmm then it seems there could be a problem with fairness because apparently some teachers use the "best my career" label more loosely than some others do. I wonder how the colleges address this...</p>
<p>exactly azwe718, every teacher is different, some are harder than others. I could get one rec from a teacher that gives me top everything and another that ranks me average.</p>