Reply to Any high school teachers here who can give some frank talk about which types of students get into the top colleges?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t think individual teachers necessarily have the broad, big-picture view of a student that OP seems to think they do - at least not very often. They know how a kid performed in their class and what they wrote in a rec letter, but may have minimal insight into other areas of the student’s academic or extracurricular performance and interests.

Not always, of course - there are certainly cases where a teacher and student really click and the teacher becomes more of a mentor and confidante and therefore does have a lot if insight into the student beyond that teacher’s own class, but I doubt that’s the majority experience. [/quote]

As a former high school teacher I can say this is mostly true. I had 120-140 students every year. There were very few students I knew well enough to know their whole profile well as in knew how they did in all their classes, how they did on standardized tests, knew what extracurriculars they did, etc. Most students I didn’t know anything about their parents/family situation, financial situation. If they asked me for a letter of recommendation then I obviously got more info but[b] for majority of students, I knew very little if anything about their stats or their college app process.[/b][/quote]

My understanding is that this is 100% fine.

Unless I understand things wrong, I thought the point of a teacher LOR is to convey first-hand experience of how the student shows up in the classroom. Are they more engaged, curious, and thoughtful in class than the average kid? (Are they exceptionally so?) Example?  How do they handle tension or disagreement in classroom discussions? How motivated have they been to ask for additional help or go the extra mile on assignments? How do they interact with their peers in class (and how are they perceived/seen by their peers?) Are they a “leader” in the classroom or a standout thinker/writer etc. Examples?

Overall GPA, ECs etc. are all described elsewhere. Unless the teacher also coaches the kid in sports or advises them in a key EC (i.e. first-hand experience) why would a teacher waste words repeating that info?[/quote]

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