<p>So a classmate of mine has a teacher who basically has no idea what he's doing and, when she approached him for a LOR, the teacher told her to write it herself and he'd sign off on it (he's the sponsor of a club she's in). </p>
<p>Basically, she's bsing a bunch of achievements in the LOR she's never accomplished, saying things like she approached the school board changed the school curriculum, founded the club, and was president (she was none of these). She's also writing in the letter that she conducted all of this research to verify her grossly exaggerated application and EC section.</p>
<p>I thought the LOR's were used to see whether or not an applicant was TRULY dedicated to his or her EC's, but when someone's doing something like this, is there any way the adcoms can tell that her application is either fake or exaggerated?</p>
<p>Why didn't the teacher just decline when he really didn't know how to write a LOR? We come from a large public school with around 500 students. I know I probably sound like I'm whining, but we have a lot of students applying to HYPS and when someone like her completely is completing bsing her EC's and LOR, I feel like I'm being harmed as a result. Is there nothing I can do? Yes, I may come off as desperate, but I really can't stand such injustice.</p>
<p>Adcoms read hundreds/thousands of recs from actual teachers. I’m pretty sure they’ll figure out that it reads differently from all the others. And keep in mind, the teacher’s contact info is right at the bottom of the form (for Common App schools at least, which include HYPS), and unless the teacher is really willing to lie to save this classmate of yours, she’s one phone call away from a reject.</p>
<p>Wow, your classmate sounds like an idiot. Does she think that the teacher will blindly sign her letter without even reading it? Because if he does read it, he’ll obviously see that she’s making things up…
Either way, I think that’s a terrible idea on her part. If the information in the letter seems false or suspicious or anything, it really would only take them a tiny bit of research to find out she’s lying. And then they’ll obviously reject her. There’s really nothing you can do about it, but it will probably come back to bite her in the ass anyway.</p>
<p>Teachers write in different styles too, though. Wouldn’t it be hard to pick up on ONE that a student wrote? And how many teachers do the adcoms ACTUALLY contact? I always get the feeling that they basically disregard the contact info.</p>
<p>And the teacher’s pretty much a pushover…I doubt he’d change the letter.</p>
<p>Someone is going to find out what she did. Is it really that hard to find a teacher that actually knows her? Really, if the teacher just didn’t know what to say, he should have had the girl provide him with a list of stuff she wanted mentioned in the letter or they should have written it together. And won’t the people notice that the writing styles for the essay and the recommendation letter are the same?</p>
<p>I agree that he shouldn’t have let her write it. And I’m not sure about the style, though I’d imagine she’d take extra precautions to make sure it’s not obviously fake, but hopefully she’ll be found out…</p>
<p>OR, you can send the admissions office an email and rat her out. But of course, you have to make sure that she really IS BSing…otherwise, the joke’s going to be on you. :D</p>