Having rec letters can hurt your chances

[kchaptergphib]

As someone who's quite familiar with at least 3 of the 11 Big Ten schools, I'd say recs would only help. Legacy status can get a little tricky, usually for the schools where a HUGE number of women from the same hometowns and families will go to the same school -Illinois, Minnesota, maybe Purdue and Wisconsin. Being a legacy wouldn't necessarily hurt your chances at your legacy chapter, but, as sometimes happens, non-legacy orgs might assume you're going to your legacy chapter, and act differently, so if you lost your legacy house, you'd have the chance of being cross-cut.
Again, this doesn't happen that often in the Big 10 schools (that I know of). And if recs were written, the orgs felt the fit was not right for them.

[AnchorAlum]

A letter or two can help tremendously, especially if the girl is attending an out of state school some distance from home.

However, the horror stories told about some girls who have 30 or 40 letters and how it worked against the girl are spot on. Some in the chapter may say
"Uh, is this person such a weak candidate that they NEED all these letters?"