Regarding teacher/counselor recs. If you are applying from a high achieving or well resourced high school, recs are extremely important. On the CDS, some colleges may indicate recs are not extremely important because they don’t hold it against an applicant coming from a poorly resourced school, where the counselor has a roster of 500 kids to write for or teachers have large classes and/or limited experience in writing recs due to the type of school/ student body. But if you are coming from a prep school, colleges pay close attention to those recs.