Letter of Recommendation

In India most of the LOR's are written by the students themselves and the only thing your prof does is sign. Except that you are from some IIT's (Infact its the same thing at IITs also). LORs play a very important role not for the admission process but for getting funding either TA or RA.

If you think we Indians are smarter then, the Americans are getting more smarter after all its we Indians who are working in America and now we are also called Americans.Coming straight to the point the university does not bother or even care to look at your LOR unless its from a prof and that too from a very well known prof ( one who has quite a good number of publications.) and usually visits to US for some events. LORs from such places would be very helpful to you. A LOR from a place of intern adds more weight to your profile.

You can c some sample LORs here