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Originally Posted by wedgedrive F.O.LTS, I thought students pretty much HAD allow confidentiality for their recommendations, that colleges would dismiss them otherwise! i have been wondering how people knew if their rec's were good or not! Am I naive or what? |
My d. refused to sign the confidentiality waiver and got into her reach colleges. (Net result: 12 applications, 9 acceptances, 2 waitlists, 1 rejection from an Ivy). My legal background tells me that there is no way that the colleges could justify treating one set of recs differently than another premised on a student's waiver of legal rights. I think that waiver is there more for the sake of the teachers who write the recs than the ad com.
I know I represent a minority opinion. but I think given the importance of recs in the admission process, it's far too risky to leave that piece of the application process open to mistakes, such as a teacher who writes the name of the wrong school on the rec or who has serious grammatical or factual errors. My d. also got 3 letters and for most colleges chose the best 2 out of 3 to submit. I am firmly convinced that one letter in particular stood out and helped tipped the scale in favor of her admission at her reach colleges.
That being said, I also think its silly to speculate as to what was in Ghosh's letters The process of Ivy admission is far too competitive to attribute a rejection to a bad letter; the Ivy's do not need a reason to reject... they just need strong reasons to admit. As I noted before, I think this is a matter of fit -- a very strong math/science applicant who is a great fit for for Cal Tech may not stand out with the type of "leadership" or "initiative" credentials that Harvard or similar schools are looking for. Nothing wrong, just didn't make the cut when competing against other students who managed to stand out a little more.
I'd note that a rec. letter can be great, but there is always going to be some other student whose letters proclaim the student as amazing, along with specific facts and anecdotes to back that up. (That's what my d. had from one of her teachers). But even "amazing" by itself is not going to get the student in -- it is the application as a whole. Again.... it's not a matter of reasons to reject, its the "different" and "special" factor that is so elusive when competing in an applicant pool filled with top-flight students.