Almost all the teachers at my overpopulated school copy paste rec letters for their students so that they’re nearly indistinguishable from one another. For example, one of my teachers magically wrote 50 rec letters in one weekend. I wanted to know how much this would hurt me; I get that colleges want students whose teachers gush over them, but shouldn’t they also consider context?
By now, you’ve probably learned more about the process, and may understand how schools treat this.
The highly selective and selective schools admissions departments typically have admin officers who are assigned to a given state or region, and these people do have some understanding about each of the high schools in their region.
They understand the huge difference between a rec letter from a guidance counselor at a huge high school who is responsible for 500-700 kids, and very likely does not have a meaningful relationship with most of their students, which is not at all comparable to a GC at a private HS who is responsible for 20-30 kids. Similarly, at the huge schools, the department teachers also have many more students to work with, so not only they cannot physically produce gushing rec letters for all of them, they also will have had more of an opportunity to run across many more very talented kids. The high school profiles will describe the student/teacher ratio so the selective colleges will understand this context.
We toured all of the elite colleges and many of the highly selective schools, and virtually every one of them discussed the fact that the admissions officers know their high schools, and they don’t hold where you came from against you, because of factors you can’t control. They just want to see that you’ve done your best with what was available to you.
Wealth buys more than just nice cars and amazing vacations. It also can buy opportunity for the kids. The people that live in more expensive communities with top-ranked schools or that send their kids to expensive privates think they are getting something for their money. Do you think they were mistaken, that they could have sent their kids to Underfunded-Overcrowded HS and get the same results in college admissions?