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Should you send an extra recommendation letter?
When an optional extra recommendation adds evidence your other letters cannot, which extra letter carries the most weight and how to check each policy first.
SourceBased on what we at Aristo learned from the Stanford admissions office.
Stanford's admissions office allowed one additional letter from someone who knows the applicant well and can offer new insight, and the word one was set in bold, among the very few bolded words on the page. Readers in that office knew why. They work through thousands of files in a season, and the last thing they want is another page of standard praise. Families tend to see an extra letter as a free addition, one more voice in the student's favor, and so they ask whoever is willing to write. Sometimes that helps. More often it does something the family never sees, and it can turn a reader who was ready to argue for a student into one who is mildly annoyed.
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