<p>For some personal reasons, I have deiced to start my common app. I know it is very late, and I have several concerns, but it's my only hope left for getting into college. My biggest concerns are the letters of recommendation. How do they work? I have had teachers write me recommendation letters before, can I get them to submit the letters they already wrote for me so I don't make them write an entire letter for me in under two weeks? Do they have to send the letters to each individual college I am applying for, or does the letter go to all of the colleges in my dashboard?</p>
<p>Yes, they can certainly upload a rec that they previously wrote rather than writing a whole new one. You invite your recommenders through your common app account and then assign them to individual schools on your dashboard one school at a time. Teachers just do one single teacher eval and rec for you no matter how many schools you assign them to.</p>
<p>You “invite” teachers to recommend you via the CommonApp. They get an email with log-in info, then they log in and submit their recommendation and some other info. For each college you apply to on CommonApp, you can select which submitted recommendations you’d like to include.</p>
<p>They can certainly use an old recommendation, though it should probably be edited/updated a bit for college.</p>
<p>It can all be done very quickly if you get a hold of those teachers ASAP, and invite them via CommonApp.</p>
<p>@niceday and @Pancaked</p>
<p>Fantastic. That makes it much easier. How do you suggest I format the letter? Start it off with to whom it may concern? The intro sentence is: “It is my pleasure to recommend (my name) to (the program I applied to)”. Should I change it to: “It is my pleasure to recommend (my name) to your institution”? That makes it universal and applies to any college.</p>
<p>Your question is puzzling. You appear to be a student applicant asking for advice writing a recommendation letter? Your teachers should be writing the recommendations, not you. </p>
<p>In any event, the exact style of the opening is an unimportant part of the letter. It’s the body of the letter that matters.</p>
<p>After you “invite” them through commonapp, your teachers will click on the FIRST link (they have to be careful not to click the seconc which makes them “opt out”!!!) and be able to start their recommendation. The written paragraph is only a small portion of it, there are lots of questions (checking in a grid, short-answer…). As for the written evaluation, there’s no introduction, it’s just anecdotes showing how you demonstrated the qualities they said you had in the grid that is above the paragraph. That paragraph can be cut/pasted but cannot be school-specific.</p>
<p>I am just editing the letters my teachers already wrote for me in order to make it easier on my teachers since I’m asking them last minute. It all ended up working out though. Thanks!</p>