<p>shashank</p>
<p>I think you should start a new thread with this question. No one will find it under this subject heading.</p>
<p>shashank</p>
<p>I think you should start a new thread with this question. No one will find it under this subject heading.</p>
<p>yeah, posting in College Admissions, also College Search, will get more responses.</p>
<p>I think the fact that colleges make "extra"curricular activities now de facto mandatory for college admissions makes all the dedication and passion people used to feel for them mean nothing. When people at my school talk about extracurricular, all it is is about how colleges will look at it for ‘leadership’ - no one cares about whatever they are doing, whether its helping homeless people or other things: the only exception is sports, where people do it because they simply love it.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of colleges don’t include ECs as part of their admissions process. They emphasize stats – grades, coursework, class rank, college boards, and if ECs are used for anything, they are used for merit aid.</p>
<p>In fact, most students in this country get into their first choice college. Getting into college just isn’t that hard.</p>
<p>The colleges that do factor ECs in a great deal are places like HPY, which have an overabundance of high stat applicants, and can therefore afford to select students based on who will help contribute to a well rounded, diverse campus, including in terms of the ECs that students pursue.</p>
<p>Northstarmom,
Even our public university (UF) takes a holistic approach. Our hs has the naviance program which shows success among our own students in scattergram form. There are several kids with GPAs above 3.5 and SATs above 1400 that got waitlisted/denied. Of course you can imagine the public outcry/curiousity amongst the parents of younger students (after all, we are a Florida school so LOTS of kids want to be a GATOR). People get all shook up about stuff like that. The party answer from our guidance dept. was “well, you have to take into consideration the students’ OTHER attributes, i.e. their EC’s.”</p>
<p>LOL, I’d like to know what those EC’s were.</p>
<p>Maybe they were denied because of when they applied, because of what they wrote on the essays (may have blown them off assuming they’d get an easy acceptance) or because of teacher recommendations.</p>
<p>Now, if the other students’ ECs were being an excellent football or basketball player, that also may have given those students an edge. I don’t think, however, that general ECs give much of an edge at state universities, which almost universally make decisions overwhelmingly based on stats.</p>
<p>“Maybe they were denied because of…or because of teacher recommendations.”</p>
<p>Now THAT’S a terrifying thought!</p>
<p>I have a feeling that teacher recommendations play a huge role when kids are unexpectedly denied admission to schools where their stats make them look like they are sure admits.</p>
<p>Maybe rejection due to bad teacher reccs is what happens to the cheating students whom we hear about on CC who think that it’s normal and expected to cheat.</p>
<p>or a lackluster teacher recommendation, or a poorly written recommendation…or one that is submitted late or not at all. Picking which teachers to write on your behalf is critical.</p>
<p>Example: a teacher I knew wrote on a student’s application for a science scholarship “she is popular among her peers” but nothing about the student’s science ability. Apparently the student was not a strong science student and the teacher decided to just write about what this student’s strengths were because she didn’t want to make things up, or be untruthful.</p>
<p>I would think a teacher would tell an innocent student who asked him/her to write a recommendation, if she couldn’t do it in good faith. And I certainly wouldn’t expect a student who had been caught cheating to ask that teacher to write a recommendation!</p>
<p>What kind of person wants to ruin a kid’s chances of getting into college?</p>
<p>I guess there are teachers that don’t behave as expected. I know some teachers that only will take on so many recommendations because they know they can’t complete more than that many before deadlines. Not everyone does that. Some teachers don’t write as well as others. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if students that cheat ask a teacher that knows about the cheating to write a recommendation–particularly the students that don’t feel cheating is wrong.</p>
<p>I have looked as some of the questions they ask on the non-Common app applications and they are very specific as to the qualities of the student. Why would a teacher or guidance counselor lie just to advance a student that does not have those qualities the college is seeking? If they are habitually tardy, or unenthusiastic, or prone to cheating should that be hidden if asked? Would that not poison the well for any subsequent applicants if the recommendations from a particular school are untruthful?</p>
<p>Teachers should NOT be dishonest. But if I could not give a student a favorable recommendation based on past experience, I would tell him before, basically, blackballing him.</p>
<p>And that goes back to picking your teachers carefully for the recommendation process. A teacher that would not “blackball” you would be an excellent choice.</p>
<p>My son was one of the top Government students in his class, but the teacher did not like that he would debate some of her points in class. He did not pick her for recommendations. Conversely, he was not one of the best Calculus students but that teacher was very impressed that he would grind away at Calc BC when he could have quit with plenty of math credits. He did select her for recommendations. I wrote a recommendation for a scholarship for a friend’s son because the science teacher never got around to it and the deadline was approaching. He was her best student, and yet it slipped through the cracks.</p>
<p>I think the Guidance Counselor questionnaires are quite telling. The schools do want to ferret out the “perfect on paper but not so in real life” candidates for more scrutiny.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I’m for some kind of student’s rights. Perfect on paper but not so perfect- what does that mean? A kid has great grades, faultless conduct record, community service hours, SAT scores, whatever the school wants… and who is gonna say yeah…but…
I can see if there are documented disciplinary problems, suspensions, whatever…but aside from that?
In our public schools, in our state, we have rights to see our student records-what’s in them, teacher evaluations, counselor evals, dean referrals, etc. There’s no secrecy. So a student will know if there are any black balls coming out. I would hope to God that an unknowing student wouldn’t be blindsided by some unexpected negative report at the end of his or her career.</p>
<p>“I would think a teacher would tell an innocent student who asked him/her to write a recommendation, if she couldn’t do it in good faith.”</p>
<p>I thought the same thing until after I got into college and, when I told this to one of teachers who had written a recommendation for me, she told me that she had told Harvard to reject me because she thought I couldn’t do the work!</p>
<p>I had gotten good grades in her class and also had done well on the SAT II related to her course. I also ended up graduating from Harvard with honors in her subject.</p>
<p>Northstarmom,
That’s AWFUL. And I hope that you’re something close to my age (40’s) and that those days of omnipotent power for teachers to potentially destroy a kid’s educational future are OVER!</p>
<p>Students do have rights. They don’t have to waive their right to see the recs.</p>
<p>doubleplay,
I personally have not met a colleague who would do such a thing (deliberately blackball a student). Students at my D’s school are instructed to ask a teacher if he/she feels they could offer a positive rec. (not just “would you do my rec?” or “I need one” or “please do one for me”) I don’t know of any there, or any among teachers I know, who would agree to do so while harboring conscious ill will or reservations about a student.</p>
<p>However, the unconscious & the subconscious are powerful forces. I’m amazed by the number of students posting on CC (and for that matter some of their parents) who reveal what little respect they have for teachers whose recommendations they need. I wonder if they understand how quickly that is picked up by a teacher. Beyond that, a demonstration of overt Attitude in class, or a superior attitude by their parents, or endless criticisms of the teacher by a parent, constantly doing an end-run around the teacher by complaining to administration, etc. — any of these are likely to taint a rec. even subtly, or to the point that the praise will seem lukewarm even when the student is quite capable. There have been many parents on CC who declare that teacher recs are “worthless.” Really? You think admissions committees feel that way? You (the rhetorical you, not you, doubleplay) don’t understand that others in education (ie., colleges) will tend to respect the opinion of a colleague in education? </p>
<p>Which political lessons haven’t you learned yet? </p>
<p>Now, the teacher who made negative comments about NSM as a student was unprofessional & unethical, to say the least. However, it sounds as if perhaps NSM was smart enough not to confront the teacher, make An Issue out of it, etc. </p>
<p>But “omnipotent”? That’s pretty excessive as a descriptor. </p>
<p>Just be careful that the family is not <em>asking</em> for trouble. When you want your boss to promote you, recommend you for promotion, give you a raise, etc., I doubt that you’re In-His-Face. (No matter how you privately feel about him or her.)</p>
<p>"Now, the teacher who made negative comments about NSM as a student was unprofessional & unethical, to say the least. However, it sounds as if perhaps NSM was smart enough not to confront the teacher, make An Issue out of it, etc. "</p>
<p>Actually, I think that my parents and I should have confronted the teacher and the administration about what the teacher did. Her writing a bad recommendation was bad enough. After all, why agree to write a recommendation if you plan to slam the student? But her telling me about her recommendation after I got in was just plain mean, something that hurt me and undermined my confidence as I got ready to go to college.</p>
<p>A few years ago, I found the 10-page research paper that I had done for her class. She had given me a B-, something that back then, I thought I deserved since after all, she was the teacher, and I was sure that her grading was fair. When I looked at the paper a few years ago, I realized that the paper was better than what most of the college seniors I was teaching were doing. It definitely was not a B- paper.</p>