Who should you ask for an extra recommendation letter?

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office cover regions, which means the reader who opens your file has likely met your school's most requested teachers many times already, through their templates. At a large school those teachers write so many letters that a template becomes inevitable, and a letter built on one, however warm, sounds like the letters it sits beside. Families rarely see this, because the letter is confidential and the teacher is beloved. There is a second cost as well: the most impressive things a student has done, the research, the event she founded, the competition the reader has never heard of, are exactly what a stock letter cannot speak to. Both problems share a solution, and it is simpler than most families expect.