How do recommendations work?

<p>I wanted to get a college professor of mine to write me a recommendation, through the CommonApp. I am applying to 5 colleges and I would like that professor to recommend me for all of these colleges. When I go to the assign recommenders page, am I only inviting them to recommend me for that particular college? So if I wanted to get recommendations for 5 colleges I would have to send them 5 separate invite recommendations? Furthermore, when they write recommendations for multiple colleges, do they just write one letter and then just change the name of the college for each one?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>For recs, inviting recommenders is your first step, assigning them to schools is your second step.</p>

<p>Assuming your HS does not use Naviance, when you invite recommenders through the common app they will get one single email from the common app inviting them to upload one single generalized recommendation for you to colleges. That one document will be sent to all schools to which you assign the particular recommender. The recommender will not be made aware through the common app process of which schools you assign the recommendation to, if any, and the recommendation should generally not be addressed to any particular school. </p>

<p>Through your common app account, on a school by school basis, you will choose which of your invited recommenders to assign to each school. The one general recommendation uploaded by your assigned recommender is delivered by the common app to each school to which you assign that recommendation, if any. You will not be able to see the actual recommendations through your common app account but you will be able to see the status of whether the recommendations have been uploaded.</p>

<p>So I can invite a recommender from any of the tabs for the different colleges and it will send out a single, general invitation?</p>

<p>@niceday–I am pretty sure my school uses Naviance. However, I am not too familiar with it, as we only talked about it briefly during my sophomore year. How should I begin if I want a teacher to recommend me through Naviance?
Our guidance counselor hasn’t gone over any of it, either. Do you think I should ask her?</p>