Recommendation letters make or break an application. A recommendation letter tells the school about you as an individual, and what a professional's personal thoughts are about you. Schools get to have a firsthand experience of knowing you as a person without ever talking to you directly--and while certainly there are interviews for some schools for you to make a further lasting impression, their very first impression of you is through a recommendation letter. You might compare it to something we're all familiar with, whether we like it or not--talking about other people. This could be good, this could be bad--it...