<p>So I had an issue with a teacher rec. I received my teacher rec and read it over, and found that it wasn't specific enough. However, before that, it already had been submitted to common app online. I got rid of said app and made a new one (online) for Yale. I then changed the teacher rec (one of two) to another teacher. Did this remedy this issue, or did it already send it to Yale?</p>
<p>I don’t get this whole scenario. How is it that a student is able to access teacher recommendations, delete one, and “make” a new one? Not suggesting that you’re doing it, but if this is possible, what would prevent a student from altering a rec or fabricating one?</p>
<p>As for your question, you probably need to ask it of Yale Admissions.</p>
<p>^I’m guessing that the teacher showed the rec to OP. I don’t think he actually saw it online on the Common App site. What he probably did was just delete the teacher from his account. That’s all speculation, though.</p>
<p>Yes. That is precisely what I did. ccuser18. I would never fabricate anything (I’m not offended, just making a statement)</p>
<p>Did you not waive your rights to see the recs? That sends up a red flag to adcoms.</p>
<p>I did waive my rights. I ended up asking to see my teacher rec (on paper) and didn’t realize this until afterward. Honestly, I didn’t mean to screw up by ignoring the FERPA. Oops. That probably wasn’t the best thing, eh?</p>
<p>Yeah. but Yale’ll never know and I don’t consider it disingenuous. However, trying to change it, in my opinion, is. That is what the teacher had to say about you. At this point, either send it or don’t. But you really shouldn’t alter it.</p>
<p>I think it’s all good – although I don’t think most of the people in this forum can answer the question that the OP came here to get answered (which is why OP might want to post this in another forum better suited to eliciting an answer to his/her question and why, I think, people here are instead weighing in on the ethics of this).</p>
<p>Being mostly ignorant as to the answer to the OP’s actual question, I, too, will join the ethics discussion and take the position that everything described here seems 100% legit to me.</p>
<p>As I understand it, the OP waived rights but, after submitting it on-line, the teacher showed the recommendation to OP. There’s nothing wrong with that. The student doesn’t have a legal right to that information, but a teacher is free to share it and a student is free to read it. A FERPA waiver is not a promise to never inquire about or see information in the file. It just means that the student cannot legally compel others to show the information that’s subject to the waiver.</p>
<p>As for deleting the Common Application account with the recommendation and creating a new one that will pool different recommendations, I see no problem with that, either. Since the teacher freely shared the recommendation with the student, the student is free to react and take steps to put his/her best foot forward on the application. I don’t think there’s anything that says you have to sit on a lousy hand that you’ve been dealt. Schools want teacher recommendations – of the student’s choosing. Clearly, students are free to “game” this, if you will, by choosing which teacher(s) will write for them.</p>
<p>Had the student been able to read several teacher recommendations beforehand and choose which teacher to choose, there would be nothing wrong with that. (It would be extremely unusual and I doubt teachers would want to play along and expend effort on a recommendation and then have it be placed in a “beauty contest” with other recommendations…but there’s nothing that prohibits this or makes it unethical or wrong, with or without a FERPA waiver.)</p>
<p>In this case, the teacher freely shared the recommendation with the student before the student’s application was sent to Yale. It seems draconian to think there’s an ethical mandate that compels the OP to live with that recommendation “as is” simply because the teacher hit a “SEND” button before sharing the recommendation with the OP. I can easily imagine teachers sharing their recommendations BEFORE hitting “SEND” and asking the student if the facts are accurate or if it is detailed enough (which is the OP’s concern) or if it adequately covers the particular areas that the applicant wants to have covered through a teacher recommendation. Whether we’re on this side of the “SEND” button or the other side of it shouldn’t alter the ethics of this.</p>
<p>So now OP has a new, second Common Application account. S/he is going by the same process as everyone else and asking a teacher (a different one) to write a recommendation, just like everyone else, and choosing a teacher that is most likely to give the best recommendation, just like everyone else…except that, for this new account, the OP is aware that one particular teacher isn’t so good about filling in specific examples and details when writing recommendations. OP could ask the first teacher if s/he’d re-write the recommendation and submit it to the new account…or just thank the first teacher and ask a different teacher to write one.</p>
<p>Getting back to the OP’s concern as to whether the recommendation sailed straight through to Yale after the teacher hit “SEND” – I think that’s a question that the experts on the electronic Common Application are best able to address. Asking Yale about it doesn’t fly. I don’t think Yale would be interested in sorting through their data to find out whether a teacher recommendation on an uncompleted account reached their server…nor do I think the OP is interested in asking them to dig it up in the event that it did sail straight through to Yale.</p>
<p>My guess is that Yale will not read the first recommendation along with the materials submitted with the OP’s new account. I’m not sure whether the first recommendation went straight through, but even if it did, that recommendation probably just sits in an electronic file folder forever unseen by human eyes. It’s conceivable that Yale might pool the data from multiple common application accounts based on shared names and SSNs. I just doubt that they’d go to the trouble of wasting computing resources on such a silly exercise. Still, that’s just my guess. I’d query commonapp.org and/or more knowledgeable people here on CC to get comfort on this.</p>