My post from the "Any low GPAs get into good schools" thread: "Does it make a difference if your letter of recommendation is by a known name? Obviously you want your recommendations from the teachers who know you best and will speak most honestly about you, but if one of those teachers was somewhat of a celebrity (either in academia, professional practice, or elsewhere) would an admissions person at any "top" school take it more seriously? I know it's inevitable that if the person reviewing your application recognizes the recommender they may be slightly affected, but do schools/admissions generally acknowledge this helping or hurting any?"

Has anyone here served on an admissions committee reading letters of recommendation? How did you handle letters from people you knew and respected (or didn't respect perhaps)?

And since the question is out there, do you think it should affect the person reading the application? It's a little troubling because on the one hand many (most?) students will have little to no intimacy with well known figures in architecture, yet on the other– why abandon what is potentially a very valuable piece of the recommendation? After all, if this person is willing to put their name to it and go out of their way to describe your talent that must mean something, right? As you can probably tell I haven't thought about this enough but I certainly think it's a worthwhile discussion and would like to hear what others think.