<p>Are we nuts? Uninformed?
Yesterday we requested a copy of the Letter of Recommendation that her High School Guidance Counselor sent to colleges. We were appauled at what we read. Several of the positive comments about our Daughter also included some negative comments. What we were told is that as a matter of policy the Counselor looks to include crticisms since, and a quote, “highly selective schools are interested in a letter of substance; not only positive remarks.”</p>
<p>As a for instance: one quote from a teacher was : Her work is generally well prepared, although she waits to the last minute to complete it". </p>
<p>For background. My daughter is an “A” student, has excellent ACT’s and SAT’s and her letters of recommendations directly from the teachers is superb. </p>
<p>I could go on and on, including the fact that in the first paragraph the counselor mentioned my daughter was applying to college “a” and in the closing paragraph mentioned a different college!</p>
<p>So are we nuts? My impression is that in today’s highly competitive admissions environment the letters of recommendation are expected to be “top notch” and positive. Negative comments, in our opinion, just tell a college that “there’s a problem” rather than it being read as a positive that the counselor is giving a balanced opinion. </p>
<p>Your thoughts please. Especially any college admissions counselors that may be reading. </p>
<p>We have brought this to the attention of one of the principals of the school and they were, at first, appauled. But then after speaking with the counselor and getting his opinion on the “balanced” approach including negatives, they are now unsure. If we are right and its naive for the counselor to think he’s helping the students with the negative comments, then we’d like to help the school understand the problem so that this approach is ill advised so future students won’t be hurt.</p>
<p>I don’t think you are nuts.
I do think you were lucky to even see the GC rec. At many schools you wouldn’t be allowed to see it. (Andi, take note!!!) Just think how puzzled and confused you might have been if your D received a number of unexpected rejections. (How did she do,BTW??)
If your GC thinks he is helping students by being “fair and balanced” how will those students “fair” (fare) against other schools where the GC is glowingly over the top with praise?</p>
<p>Don’t get me started about GC’s. My S. provided the customary addressed stamped envelopes, was told the letters went out, stopped by 3 weeks after they were to arrive to find them sitting with many others on the GC’s desk. Unhappy is a mild word.</p>
<p>From what I have heard and read in lots of those college advice books, if a letter is glowing to a degree of glaring, it is no taken very seriously. The GC is supposed to give a balanced view. It is the one unsolicted recomendation. The other recommendations are the student’s choices, and the student of course would only pick someone who would say only positive things. No one is perfect and its the GC job to show all sides of a student. A letter from a GC that says a student walks on water won’t be taken seriouslly. THat is not what colleges want. Read A is for Admissions, and other books about the process. They are very iilluminating.</p>
<p>Was anything in the letter factually wrong, besides the college names (Ps that will be overlooked…admin people know GCs are overwhelmed)</p>
<p>Generally, the students never see the GC letter, and I am really suprised you saw your Ds. </p>
<p>And yeah, there are some great GC and some really bad ones.</p>
<p>PS If the GC letter is TOTALLY out of whack with everything else, that will be noted as well.</p>
<p>My question is, by now your D has her college acceptances back. Did they match what you expected?</p>
<p>If a guidance counselor has relationships at colleges, he is bound to be honest and help the schools choose the school’s best candidates. That way they will take even more of those he highly praises in subsequent years.</p>
<p>Recommendations aren’t the place for constructive criticism. I’ve always felt that if a GC or teacher can’t honestly give a uniformly positive recommendation, they should so inform the student and suggest the student seek another recommender. I’m not suggesting that the recommendation be larded with false praise, or that every student be heaped with accolades, but rather that gratuitous and unnecessary comments (like the “last minute” one cited above that adds nothing to the college’s understanding of the student) should be omitted.</p>
<p>I’ve heard complaints about some private prep counselors who may value their relationship with Ivy admissions officers so highly that they may be unusually frank about the shortcomings of applicants or try to choose which students they push for each school. I doubt if this is the norm, but I think the GC should be a lot like an attorney - provide informed advice as to the best course of action (e.g., be honest if the student is a long shot at Princeton), but once the client decides, do the best possible job of representing the client in his/her quest.</p>
<p>A good guidance counselor should even be cautious about “negative praise” - for example, too much emphasis on hard work might suggest a plodder who is lacking in brilliance or creativity. (Of course, sometimes that may be the best thing one can say.) The counselor should certainly be honest in writing recommendations, but should weigh the impact of what he/she puts in each one. </p>
<p>(Off topic: I’d add that one of the more brilliant students I knew in college was the master of last-minute work. Everyone else would cram for days, and he’d start thinking about opening the book at midnight the night before the test… and then ace it.)</p>
<p>Usually the GC recommendation is not optional. There is a reason colleges want it. It is the only one where a student can’t pick and choose. Rightly or wrongly.</p>
<p>Of the schools we looked at and from what I read, many schools want 2 max 3 recommendations, and one must be from the GC and often another is from a teacher.</p>
<p>So you can’t just not get a letter from a GC because it isn’t 100 glowing.</p>
<p>The problem in our school is that our GCs are “schedulers” and really don’t have a lot of insight into most of their 650+ assigned students. While you won’t get an overly critical recommendation, you won’t necessarily get an informative one, either. The principal couldn’t write an accurate recommendationm either–over 3800 students.</p>
<p>I’m surprised you were allowed to read the rec at all and I wonder how a GC would know that a student left work until the last minute. It sounds to me like the GC was getting that information from a classroom teacher (or was it in a teacher rec?) or completely making it up. In our school, GCs don’t really know much about students unless they’ve been in academic or personal trouble. They rely on what the students (and teachers) report in order to write up their recs. </p>
<p>Is there any truth to the comment? I can’t believe an administration would support a GC who throws in a false comment just to add ‘balance’. The fact that the administration backed away suggests that after talking to the GC they felt (s)he had reason for the comment. On the other hand, I still don’t see how a GC would have any idea if a student put off work until the last minute, unless it were a huge problem that teachers complained to GC about. You mention other negative comments; if you add them altogether, do they have the ‘ring of truth’ or does it come across as boilerplate? </p>
<p>We had a situation in our school a couple years ago where a GC wrote a less than stellar rec and accidentally mailed it to the student’s home. Mother read rec, complained, superintendent told GC something to the effect that ‘we weren’t in the business of writing bad letters of ref. If you can’t say something positive, give it to someone who can.’ Seems to me to be a good philosophy. If someone can’t write a positive letter of ref., they should say so, then student can seek letter from someone else. I’m sure this goes on a lot more than most of us ever know, since most of us never had the chance to read any of our kids’ letters of ref.</p>
<p>I too am surprised that you read the letter of recommendation – would not happen at our high school. GC gives parents questionnaire – Brag
Sheet – to fill out about their kid. One question asks something like
“What do you want to tell me about your student that you don’t want to share with colleges?” At our meeting, GC told us he rarely puts negative comments into form he completes. That aside, since our GC is a tough cookie, I am sure when he completes questions with scores
ranging from 1-10 or is this candidate in top group ever, top this year,
etc., schools can guage more accurately GC’s assessment beyond the
comments.</p>
<p>I am remembering now that some of the recommendation forms actually ask if there is anything negative they should know, or what the weaknesses of said student might be. I know I have seen that on some of the forms. Many of them also ask to put this student in context of the other top students…I want to say Davidson or maybe it was Lehigh. I just remember seeing that somewhere.</p>
<p>And then there are the dreaded peer recs. It’s not what they say, but how they write it!</p>
<p>I am aware that most colleges require a statement from the GC. It never accured to me that one would write a negative comment on the report. I understand that every student can’t be super student, but surely something positive can be said about most any student. Like we have always taught the children, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything!” Sure the GC can mention a weakness in an area, but counter that with a positive. I’m sure the college will get the hint if there aren’t many glowing comments for student X; leave the negatives out unless you can follow them up with the positive.</p>
<p>I was going to say that this informations should be all positive as the forms are called “Teacher Recommendations”; unfortunately, what comes from the GC is a report, not a recommendation. Many GC have little if any knowledge of the students they work with. At the end of junior year we fill out a form with information about our child for the GC. We also write a description of our child-negatives, positives, likes, dislikes, wants, needs, etc… We are trying to draw a picture of our child so the GC can “see” the student she is writing about. I believe it is helpful for them to get the parents input as well as the teachers.</p>
<p>I don’t write negative comments on a rec letter but really don’t consider “waits to the last minute to complete it” to be a negative comment. I would decline to write a letter for someone I have any negative feelings about, especially in the areas of behavior, character, integrity. (i.e. someone who got caught cheating) </p>
<p>Rec letters should be honest and not solely public relations documents.</p>
<p>There’s a book by Richard Moll (sp?) called something like “Playing the Private College Admissions Game.” In it he compares a GC’s letter from a top private school with one from a public school. The private school describes the applicant warts and all; the public one is wholly positive. The book claims one reason that the private schools tend to do better over all in admissions than most publics is that the guidance counselors tell the truth. When every letter from a GC is glowing, they aren’t worth the paper they are written on and Moll says most public school recs aren’t.</p>
<p>So the letter had some critisim. If the letter came off as perfect it means little. It is really easy to say only glowing things, but that comes across as superficial. So, it says the student can procrastinate. That doesn’t take away from all the awards, and accomplishments. </p>
<p>You have other letters of recomdation that come from people you choose. I can’t wait for these kids who complain about something negative being said about them when it comes to job interviews, grad school, and the like. Not everything is going to be “you are the best and have no room for improvement”</p>
<p>As for the letter only saying good things, that is not what colleges want. If every letter from a GC was glowing and the student came across with no flaws, than the good things said won’t be taken very seriously.</p>
<p>So, if the GC can’t just say positive things and you decline to get that rec because of this, it just looks bad for the student.</p>
<p>There are negatives and there are negatives. Wording conveys quite a bit — Saying a child’s work is “generally good but she waits to the last minute” is definitely sending a message to the college that this straight A student may not deserve the A’s she has received. </p>
<p>Now, if it were phrased just a little differently - say “One potential weakness that Suzy has is that she sometimes has difficulty with time management. She has worked to overcome this weakness and now consistently meets deadlines with quality results” This says almost the same thing (she has a bit of weakness) but adds a positive (she knows she has it and avoids letting it affect the quality of her work).</p>
<p>I believe this is what all of the books mean when they say that an overly glowing recommendation can be just as bad as an overly negative one. OF course, guidance counselors and teachers shouldn’t lie, but they can word things in a way that points out the warts and yet doesn’t do as much damage to the child’s chances.</p>
<p>You might want to pass a copy of this link along to your school’s guidance office: It’s a copy of a chapter in a training manual put out by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) that deals with how guidance counselors should handle recommendations. Doesn’t say word one in there about stuffing them full of negative comments as an effective strategy for getting kids into college:</p>