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<p>I can’t shake the feeling that somehow someway I didn’t give all of me in my app, even though everytime I read it I think I have…damnit I should of added more humor!</p>
<p>lmao philovitist. what an awesome way to make your app stand out.
and my adcom visited my school where she talked all about the glories of yale and i got to have a nice conversation with her (albeit short).</p>
<p>Do they really read recs first and base initial decisions off that? Sigh</p>
<p>I wish recs weren’t given so much weight in the process. One of my teachers showed me the rec she wrote me. She told me she’d write me the best rec ever and that anyone who reads it will be extremely impressed.</p>
<p>She let me read the rec and it said things like “top 1% of students I’ve ever had” but it was super generic. She talked about my ECs for half of it. I’m really upset. What’s the point of that? They already know my ECs. The rec was filled with platitudes like “runnerxc demonstrates his passion for helping others through his volunteer work at the local animal shelter”. No anecdotes, no specifics, etc.</p>
<p>She really loves me but I don’t think she knows how to write a great rec. Why should I be penalized because my teacher isn’t as good at writing recs as others? For that reason, I think essays should receive more attention.</p>
<p>What also bothers me is that I switched high schools because of a family move. I didn’t have a long time to build relationships with teachers. </p>
<p>This is a really incoherent rant and I apologize. I applied to Harvard early so their process is similar. I just know that my teacher recs won’t stand up to a kid who went to Exeter and has extremely good teachers who are used to writing great recs for kids who get into top schools :(</p>
<p>AHHH! So my teacher names were uploaded…but the wrong one 0-0</p>
<p>Basically my counseling centered screwed up an sent in an extra teacher letter that was not supposed to go (the bad part being I sent a legitimate supplementary recommendation to provide light on my political background which is a heavy part of my application), and the extra teacher rec (which was submitted 2 weeks late anyway!) is the first teacher listed and one of the two I wanted isn’t on there, meaning the rec that was never supposed to go to Yale and did because of my counseling department is one of my two primary recommendations! Ahhh. In such a cutthroat game of low admissions I don’t want this to be the factor that keeps me from admission. If I don’t get in I want it to be because of me and my application, not my counseling center screwing up so admissions looks at a weak recommendation as the primary recommendation :(</p>
<p>Well it’s too late and my counselor is too scared was too scared before to call admissions so a secretary called a yale secretary (which didn’t solve the problem she just said oh yeah I’m sure it will be fine) -_- Obviously a student saying to admissions there’s an error about this recommendation is out of the question.</p>
<p>Mah! The worst part is all my friends have had their applications messed up by our counseling departments to other top schools like U Chicago.</p>
<p>my short answer was kinda risky…i feel like i may have come off as extremely arrogant, although i was exaggerating on purpose to make a point, hopefully they saw that</p>
<p>@cantconcentrate you’re probably right but as it gets closer everything seems magnified</p>
<p>@runner xc, i’m pretty sure my recs were really generic too…hopefully they don’t hold your teacher’s writing abilities/style against you (or me)</p>
<p>@canadian2013: I have a feeling that if I don’t get into Yale, a large part of it will be because of my recs :/</p>
<p>what did everyone write about for the moment in history they’d wished they’d witnessed in the shorts? I put John Lennon performing Imagine in NYC’72, and related to peace and unity</p>
<p>@redboldx Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury</p>
<p>mine wasn’t nearly so deep…i wanted to go back to a moment in history (forget exactly when now) but it was when Grace Marks killed Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery (or not)…pure curiosity to know what really happened after reading alias grace haha</p>
<p>@runnerxc I had the same issue with switching schools. It screwed up nearly every aspect of my application. Clubs wouldn’t let me join because “upperclassman are just trying to pad their resumes for college.” They changed some of my courses to enter in their system. My required courses changed when I switched, meaning I wasted time with regular level courses I didn’t need and screwed my rank (when I didn’t even have it before). I lost all my connections for extracurriculars and spent junior year attempting to build relationships/find opportunities rather than just doing the cool stuff I had planned. I’ve seen my counselor 2-3 times ever, tops, so that rec will be meh. I had to redo my entire schedule plan with a new set of grad reqs & switching from IB to AP. Nobody could get me an online account for homework until I was there almost a semester and failed to explain a bunch of other weird school specific stuff. Without mentioning the actual stress of being in a new place and finding new friends. 
</p>
<p>And that’s the end of that loooong rant. I mean, even with all that, I’ve accomplished a lot in high school and hopefully some schools (if not Yale) see that.</p>
<p>For moment in history, I said I wanted to see the first showing of a Shakespeare play. It’s kinda vague, but I’m a huge English lit/theatre nerd. I figured I should just be genuine rather than think of something that sounded good.</p>
<p>@runnerxc yeah I feel you, I don’t think recs should come first either. I also don’t think that they do though.</p>
<p>guys, the mail vs electronic recs hypothesis is true. One of my teachers sent a rec through Common App and the other sent on via snail mail. Only the name of the teacher who sent one through Common App shows up.</p>
<p>oh and for the moment in history thing, I put the creation of Stonehenge so that I would be able to find out if aliens really exist :D</p>
<p>ok this is probably going to sound really harsh, but I think it’s pretty ungrateful of you guys to be complaining about your teacher recs. it takes time for teachers to write them (time they probably don’t have much of) and they are under no obligation to do so. they’re doing you a favor. I know one of my teachers who wrote my rec writes all his recs over the summer, because he spends so much time on them. and my other teacher read a journal-type-thing I made (that was around 250 pages) before writing my rec.</p>
<p>Eeyore4 is right. Attitude of gratitude, people! They are doing you a huge favour, and could easily refuse to write your letters of recommendation.</p>
<p>Actually, writing recs is kind of part of the job. But either way, I don’t think people were being ungrateful at all - these apps are important and since so much hinges on the quality of your rec, it helps if your teacher knows how to write one. It sounds like you’re really lucky.</p>
<p>Eeyore, I see what you’re saying. I can’t speak for runnerxc, but I’m not complaining about my teacher recs. I just am stating that I do not believe teacher recommendations should be the predominate means of judgement.</p>
<p>That’s great that your teachers spend so much time on your recs, but the fact is that not all teachers spend as much time as you do. There are teachers that are so overburdened that they only spend maybe half an hour on a rec, while yours are able to spend hours over the summer writing them. That’s great for you, but no so great for the kid who has busy teachers, and therein lies the somewhat unfair nature of teacher recs that runnerxc was referring to. </p>
<p>In fact, I am blessed to go to a private school with 80 students per class and some really extraordinary teachers. I had 5 kids in my Comp Sci III class last year, and that was the third year that my comp sci teacher taught me. This meant he knew me well and was able to write a very personal rec for me which I am certain he spent a lot of time on. Same story for my other teacher rec. However, not all students are afforded this opportunity and in this way I received a bit of an unfair leg up on some students just on the merit of the high school I attend.</p>
<p>So in fact, I am not complaining, and would never complain, about my teacher recs. I think they’re probably quite good and I am thankful for the time my teachers spent on writing them. (Same goes for the rec that my research mentor-- an incredibly busy professor at a large university-- took the time to write). I am simply recognizing that not all students were as lucky as I am, and I therefore don’t think teacher recommendations should be the primary means of evaluation (as one poster above suggested).</p>