@sybbie719 Was your comment meant for me or as advice for @smithemi97 ? If it was meant for me then I will draw your attention to my first post where I said Dartmouth accepted my daughter and she is a member of the Class of 2019. She will be starting classes on Wednesday. Her recommendation letter was as unique as she is. Simply because I didn’t list each and every item that was included in her peer recommendation does not mean that we made a poor choice in the selection of writer nor that they didn’t share any of the experiences that were explored. Her letter spoke volumes as to who she is.
I decided, based upon our experience of being in this position last year, to offer my opinion to smithemi97 on what was successful for us. I chose to focus and go beyond the typical advice of “find a good friend”, “get someone who has known you a long time” neither of which is particularly helpful to a student who has a sense of urgency on how to make themselves stand out from 20,000 applicants all vying for 1,000 places. Dartmouth chooses to define peer as anyone who is not in a supervisory role of the applicant. That opens the possibilities up exponentially as to who can be used to write the recommendation: sibling, co-worker etc.This is a chance to showcase the applicant’s individualism which I feel is better served by not offering up the same platitudes of how kind, generous, hard working etc the applicant is. The students at my daughter’s school have an entire semester class devoted to nothing more than writing college applications. Nothing is sent off without the college counselor, Academic Dean and Head of School first reading it and making suggested revisions. My daughter’s peer recommendation letter received no suggested revisions which says a great deal about the young woman who authored it.
I remember the urgency, the desperation, the looking for help anywhere and everywhere last year by my daughter for “inside” information. Your straight A grades, your perfect or near perfect test scores, your elected position into clubs does nothing to distinguish you. You know there are thousands of others that have the same qualifications.You want to know how did someone manage to secure that Golden Ticket. How did they against all odds manage it ? My advice was based upon this.