We’ve never applied to law school, although almost everyone in our lives suggested 10 years ago that we give it a try. Still, we’re pretty confident we could have found a half-dozen professors willing to write favorable recommendations for us. Some applicants apparently have a much tougher time fielding recommendations — or perhaps they just don’t know how certain professors really feel about them.
Like Ashby Jones over at The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog, we were pretty surprised that 87 percent of the 145 law school admissions officers surveyed by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions said they had received a negative letter of recommendation for an applicant. That’s 87 percent! Do these students not know their professors? Or should their less-than-impressed professors tell them to look elsewhere for recommendation letters? During our two years as a high school teacher, we certainly turned down recommendation letter requests from a few students who didn’t do well in our classes.
