I asked my professor for a LOR and he basically said write what I want him to say...

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I heard its common, especially for dentist recommendations. Write a overall balance letter or ask another teacher who's not lazy.
 
Yup, common. Just write all the good attributes about yourself. Maybe about how you made study groups with your friends and helped each other do well in this class and how it was noticed by your teacher. How you improved from test to test, and were always interested in learning and asking you teacher lots of questions. And then write why you want to be a dentist and some of your volunteering. Then conclude with strongly recommending yourself lol.
 
Welcome to the fakeness of real life. Professors actually write their own rec letters and have their higher up sign it to maintain their positions. Always best to do it legitimately. Sorry thought I would pop in here. PT needed 4. Mine were legitimate, but one or two before said to write my own.
 
The thing about that is.... it can be inconsistent... For example, you may say that you are the most caring and kind person you've ever met, but you've had zero volunteering hours.... It kind of raises a red flag. Or you could write that you won the gold medal in the sport called underwater-basketweaving and as impressive as it sounds, it's not on the letter written by real professors since they don't know you all that well.... See my point?
So if you plan on writing your own letters (some or all of them), be sure to write true stuff that you can back with real evidence. And try your best to be consistent.
 
It kind of depends on why the professor is having you do this. Do you 1) have a great relationship with him/her outside of class and you are basically getting a blank check? Or 2) do you go to a huge university and only know this professor minimally? 2) was true for me, and I suspect it's true for a lot of people.

I go to a huge university and my professors don't really know me, at least in many science classes. I gave my favorites and the ones who seemed more connected to the college samples of my writing--my personal statement, why I was interested in dentistry, some scholarship essays I had written, information about my extracurriculars and general interests, and then I sat down and just had a few conversations with them even though I didn't have a class with them that semester. That made it very easy for them to write the LOR because they had something to say about me.
 
I have never heard of this happening, and I would have first recommended you find someone that actually cares about your success and is willing to put forward some effort. But if others are saying that it is common, go for it. I'm sure other applicants are doing the same thing.
 
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