<p>My school is sending out my transcript, counselor evaluation, letters of recommendation, and a few other things for me. If they are doing this, can I still send in my teacher evaluation forms separately? And say I wanted to send out the letters of recommendation independently for some reason; would that also be okay? </p>
<p>Basically I need to know what HAS to be sent out through school (i.e., transcripts) and what I can do on my own, because I need to request that my guidance office send out the mandatory things ASAP but I don't have the teacher evals completed and back from my teachers yet. </p>
<p>It depends on how your high school operates. At some schools, the guidance area acts as a clearing house for all items coming from the school: the recs, the transcript, the school report.</p>
<p>At others, the process is for the teacher to give the rec back to the student in a sealed, addressed envelope and the student sends it back.</p>
<p>Check with your guidance area; ask for a “flow diagram” of how the process works. They should tell you this at the beginning of your senior year so everything goes smoothly. If you are already a senior and you are applying to schools, it sounds like you don’t understand the process and could use a one-on-one with your guidance counselor.</p>
<p>Why would you want to send out the letters of rec independently? Do you have a rec issue and mistrust your teachers and your guidance counselor? If you are already a senior and applying to schools, I’d say your guidance area did a very poor job of explaining the process.</p>
<p>But, in any event, you need to get your school’s process down correctly. People on this board can’t tell you what that is.</p>
<p>If you’re doing this because you want to READ the recs…well, they’ll be “on to you”. Our school doesn’t allow the kids to see them. Which is fine, less stress. But it also seems unfair. If the teacher wasn’t going to write a great rec, then they should say “NO” when asked. Maybe, if the teachers turned out to be less than stellar writers the kids would complain (you wrote a bad rec, I didn’t get accepted), and it’s not the teacher’s fault. Who knows. But your GC and teachers know which schools require what (for the most part; heck, they can look it up just like we do if they don’t!), so you’d have to come up with some REAL reason you wanted to send them separately. If you want transcripts sent NOW, but recs aren’t ready, THAT could be a real reason. But, FWIW…my D had NO recs sent by the school or snail mail. EVERY college she applied to (8, in-state public plus OOS privates) ALL offered the option to send the recs online, and her teachers did that in each instance)… But she also had an issue with one rec not received ontime. Sucked because it was a rec for a BIG scholarship that she has a very likely chance of getting. And, since it’s online, the teacher, who was late, was just “shut off” (past the deadline, no way). Whereas, if it was mailed, they’d possibly have still accepted it.</p>
<p>I’m not doing it to read my recommendations. The problem is that I have three schools whose deadlines are Jan 1st, and my guidance office told us all that they wouldn’t be doing anything over Christmas break. So I get back to school on the 21st, and vacation starts on the 24th. My guidance office had a very unfriendly/stressed out woman working the front desk, so to get everything out on time I know I have to give her those three transcript/other paper requests as soon as possible so that they actually get taken care of. </p>
<p>If I have to get the teacher evaluations done to go with the other essential papers I won’t be able to give those requests on the 21st. If this is still specific to my school I can ask on Monday, I would just rather have everything ready to go by then if I can.</p>