Help! Potential teacher rec snafu

Parents Forum
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<p>DS applied EA to school A using the Common App, his two teacher recommenders and the GC knew he was applying to school A, and wrote their recs online. Now we went to use their recs for his RD schools and suddenly wondered if they had specifically written the recs for school A. The one teacher we were able to contact said she didn't remember whether she mentioned school A in her rec and has no copy of her rec, and we can't get in touch with second teacher or the GC. The apps are mostly due on 1/1. </p>

<p>Do we just go ahead and use all the letters and hope that they were generic, and ask the 2nd teacher and GC on monday? If they're not generic, can we send in replacements via mail?</p>

<p>Edit: Sorry about the Help! drama. Felt helpless there for a while.</p>

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<p>Hmmm. I think you will have to go ahead and send them. If you tried to contact the other teachers and the GC you could wait as long as possible to get a reply from them and then send them if you haven’t heard. It’s odd that the teacher doesn’t have a a copy of her recommendation. Maybe she wrote it at school and it’s on her work computer? I would think that she would remember if she had mentioned school A so maybe that means you’re okay. I would also thinks that the GC would know better than to make it school specific without warning you since he/she knows how the whole common app works. The whole process can be so stressful at times, can’t it? Good luck!</p>

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<p>ihs - I would wait until Mon. There is no rush on those recs. The deadline is really for your kid’s application, not for school’s package.</p>

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<p>^^ agree. Recs can wait, the colleges want the applications by their due date (and even those deadlines are flexible.)</p>

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<p>If the teachers used the Common App link, which is sent to the teacher by email, then the teacher goes to each school’s “link” for the CA recommendation; they can upload their doc which is the actual letter. (There are also some check off things to rate the student.)</p>

<p>If a teacher was preparing their recs and submitting online, after you finished School A and went on to complete School B, you would have to be quite careless not to edit out school-specific info from A when submitting to B, but I could see how it might happen. The actual doc does not have to be a letter per se; it could be To Whom It May Concern or Dear Admissions Committee. I believe the teacher can go back into CA and see their uploaded file. The initial email to the teacher provides a link and a password. The applicant can look at their CA and determine if the teacher recs were received.</p>

<p>So it looks like:</p>

<p>College of the Ozarks (link to rate the kid and upload a doc)</p>

<p>State University of New York (link to rate the kid and upload a doc)</p>

<p>You complete each one, one at a time.</p>

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<p>Thanks everyone. So just to be clear,</p>

<p>Are you recommending that DS just sends in the apps and not list any recommenders? Because if he does list them, I think their letters, already loaded in the system, just go with the apps? </p>

<p>mom4: I thought they just loaded it once, and then the applicant directed them to all the schools, rather than the teacher directing them to each one.</p>

<p>And no, she apparently didn’t save anything:( She’s not working this year and doing everything from home.</p>

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<p>I think you could also email the Common App help desk and ask for advice. They may be able to retrieve what was sent before and make it available to the teacher (not to you). </p>

<p>You can also use this as a teachable moment to the teacher – very, very gently however. You can say something like “I am so very sorry to bother you further with this. I recognize how full your life is. We didn’t realize so much about this process. Apparently it is common for a student to need an early letter for EA and then need further help to apply during regular admissions. Your help getting us over this hurdle is deeply appreciated.” – which is a big improvement over “WHAT? A kid only gets one EA choice – OF COURSE you should have saved the file!!!”</p>

<p>Your student can also email the colleges directly and notify them that there has been a glitch with a teacher letter but it is being addressed as rapidly as possible. Because this step is at least partially dependent on teachers, admissions people are often quite tolerant – at least for a few days. NOT so tolerant is for the parts that your student should be submitting on time (Common App, supplement, fee payment, portfolio).
good luck!</p>

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<p>I think it depends on the school. I know for a fact that none of the teacher recs were sent via the online process with the common application from S’s school. In fact, I don’t think any of his teachers even used to “official” form where you simply just check boxes etc.</p>

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<p>I’d wait. When I write a recommendation, if I know which school the student is applying to, I make the recommendation school-specific. If there were an online form but I knew the kid was applying to school A, I’d still edit my school-specific rec and cut and paste it into the form.</p>

<p>My two cents.</p>

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<p>we are wondering same thing, son had listed which teachers for each of his schools on common app, then when reviewing last night saw he could add a teacher to one school ( had 2 and realized they would take 3) a teacher had already submitted to the school he was listed on… so son added him to the other school, and now wonders if the teacher was specific to the school or more generic?</p>

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<p>Mom2three: So you think we should send in the app with no recs attached? Then the teachers would have to send in hard copy letters to each of the schools DS is applying to?</p>

<p>Man, this has gotten so complicated. This was just not one of the things on our radar before getting ready to send the apps in.</p>

<p>We did contact common app and they said she could retrieve her letter if she signed in. She, of course, doesn’t have her sign in anymore…</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Yes…</p>

<p>The rec part is not due yet. For many schools, the deadline for GC/teacher recs is February.</p>

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<p>So I suggested to the teacher that she look back thru her e-mails and see if she could locate her password for the common app. She did eventually find it, got into her rec, discovered that she did indeed mention school A in her letter, revised it into a generic rec, and uploaded it into another request we had sent to her using a different e-mail she had available. Then it was just a matter of trying to keep straight which of her 2 recs was which :slight_smile: All in the course of today, in between all the other end of the year stuff.</p>

<p>Also e-mailed the other teacher who did e-mail back and said his letter was generic so we were good. We assumed the GC letter was generic.</p>

<p>So finally this evening, just before DS headed out to a New Years party, he sent out all the apps due this weekend. Great to get it done and not drag it into 2010.</p>

<p>Hard lesson learned. I wonder how often it happens that teachers rec talking about how great student would be for college A gets sent to college B, C, D, etc. Seems like with EA/ED and RD to follow, it could happen not infrequently.</p>

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<p>Don’t most teachers know that when they write a recommendation that it may be used for more than one school and they should not name a specific college? For my Ds this was not an issue at her school because, although the teachers asked where they were applying, I’m sure they have been told by the guidance office to make letters non-specific, so they can be added as necessary, to all the packets the school sends. I think colleges must assume that teachers only want to write one rec per student and won’t be offended if they are not directly addressed.</p>

<p>OTOH, if you really only expect a particular rec to be needed for one school, then it makes sense to ask the teacher to tailor it for that purpose, otherwise, I think any experienced teacher would know not to do that.</p>

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<p>OK, most of my kids aren’t CC kids applying to 15 schools. They apply to several schools that do not require recommendations (their tuition is free in Florida) unless it’s a special program like the FSU film school. Then they apply to two or three match/reach schools that require teacher recs. If I am asked to write a letter of recommendation for a student, I know which school I am writing it for. I’ve never written one for the common app. I write mine on school letterhead, and if I know why the school and the student are a good fit, I say so.</p>

<p>Unless I am instructed not to by the school, I give the letter, unsealed, to the student, with open permission for the student to read the letter. If I am instructed to send the letter directly to the school, I do.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure that my kids make it clear what school(s) the letter is going to. In addition to getting a copy of their resume, I sit and chat with the student for a few minutes about their college search and the school they are applying to.</p>

<p>If a kid asks for a rec for school A, and the teacher writes a great recommendation for school A, and then the kid decides she wants to send the letter to 5 other schools, I think it’s on the kid, not the teacher. The kid should be clear in the first place. My goal is to write the best letter I can for my students, and making the letter school specific does that. If I put in the effort to do that, and then because the student hasn’t told me the letter was going to 5 other schools the student is in a bit of a bind, it’s the student’s fault, IMO. </p>

<p>Of course, if all this is discovered BEFORE December 31, it’s no problem at all. :-)</p>

<p>I keep copies of all my letters on file.</p>

<p>Oh - as far as being told anything by the guidance department… At my school, kid comes to me, asks for letter. I write letter, and either give it to kid, or put it in envelope for school to mail out. I have had NO instructions whatsoever from guidance on the process for letters of recommendation. When I need to know something, I ask. Our guidance department does not keep track of the teachers’ recommendations. She is plenty busy keeping track of her own, God bless her.</p>

<p>One final PS - I wanted to write a GREAT letter for one of the most outstanding students I have ever had, for a highly selective school. It was very school specific. I sent it to “ask the dean” here on CC to get an opinion, and she thought the letter was great. Do you want a bunch of generic letters, or do you want your kid to get into their dream school? There may be a downside to the 15 application strategy.</p>

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<p>So glad it all worked out, It must have felt great to get it taken care of in 2009! Good luck on the outcomes :)</p>

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<p>Mom2: sounds like you take a lot of time and effort with your letters. I don’t think your SOP is quite the norm though. Bless you.</p>

<p>I think my point is simply that with the <em>common</em> app and the way that is set up with the teacher loading a letter online and the student having complete control over where that letter gets sent, there may be quite a bit of leeway for confusion. I assumed, like wildwood, that it would be generic, but clearly we were wrong. I’m just glad I listened to that little nagging ‘better double check this’ although it made for a wild and woolly 24 hrs. Part of our problem was that this teacher is not in school this year, so there isn’t any ‘stopping by’ to update on app status etc. It did become clear that she wasn’t all that versed on how the common app letters are handled despite having had 2 kids go through college app process herself. Makes me wonder about other kids that she wrote for EA/ED who are now doing RD. </p>

<p>I do really appreciate all that she has done. I just ended the year with a few more grey hairs than I had planned for:)</p>