Do teachers know which colleges you're applying to?

<p>Do teachers who give you recommendation know which colleges you're applying to?
Or do they merely submit their recommendation via Common Application and you handle everything (though the letter would be kept confidential) on your on from then?</p>

<p>The latter.</p>

<p>Is there a reason you don’t want your teachers to know where you are applying? Especially because you should have a good relationship with them as you are asking them for a letter of recommendation?</p>

<p>My kids went to a small school – I would assume if a teacher wanted to know they could just ask the guidance counselor and would be told. But I also know that teachers would not mention it to a student (or other students) unless the student brought it up first. Why would you care?</p>

<p>its a good a idea to let them know</p>

<p>They don’t know unless you tell them, which I think can be beneficial if they know something specific at the school/what you want to do, and/or if they’re an alum. I don’t think them being an alum would have pull, but it means they would be familiar with the school. It’s also fun to talk about what schools you’re thinking about and you can solicit advice from your teachers.</p>

<p>I’m kicking myself for not mentioning what school I was going to when my English teacher wrote my letter of rec, because it turns out he went to their grad school and knew about the program I was interested in. Argh!</p>

<p>I would think a thoughtful, personalized, well-crafted LOR for MIT would differ greatly from one for Wellesley, even if written for the same student.</p>

<p>The teacher is your advocate - give her as much information as possible so she can be as effectibe as possible.</p>

<p>Can teachers submit multiple LORs for a student on the CA? While I agree that personalized LORs for specific schools would sometimes be helpful, I’m not sure that most teachers have the time to do so, or that the CA permits this to happen. I don’t know about the CA, so anyone who does, please speak up.</p>

<p>Teachers and the GC upload their evaluations to the CA and the student chooses which to send as different colleges have different requirements. So technically, they will not know which ones the student submits, nor the schools the student applies to–which is what the OP asked.</p>

<p>EDIT: I forgot about the possibility of the HS using Naviance; the OP should note if that’s the case as the answer would be different.</p>

<p>I hope not- I’m applying to a handful of small, no name schools. My Chinese teacher (who’s writing one of my recs) has a son at Yale.</p>

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Your teachers knowing where you’re applying should never hurt you. They’re not meant to judge. People apply to less well known schools for many reasons. They should know that. But knowing where you are applying to can help them customize your rec more</p>

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<p>That’s probably correct. Because different schools weight different things.</p>

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<p>So what happens if she applies to both? Unless the school has its own LOR form (unlikely for an undergraduate), no teacher is going to craft the letter based on the school you apply to. </p>

<p>If you want to tell your teacher, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I don’t imagine it will make much difference in what gets written either way.</p>

<p>You’re probably applying to similar schools so you could personalize it to the type of school</p>