<p>Here's my situation: one of my teachers who originally wrote my letter of recommendation for the College Match application is going through some personal problems right now in his life. On the QuestBridge website, it says that I should start working on my CommonApp just in case I am a finalist. But the thing is, I don't want to ask my teacher to write a whole another letter of recommendation for the CommonApp (due on Nov 1 for College Match finalists) if he's going through tough times right now.</p>
<p>What I want to know is if the CommonApp letter recs are entirely different from the QuestBridge ones? Because if not, then I would feel a bit better asking my teacher to write one for CommonApp since he can just tweak a few things from the one he wrote for QuestBridge. Please help!</p>
<p>Don’t burn me at the stake if I’m wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure you can have different recommendations. It may even be an advantage to show that you made connections with multiple teachers…
I on the other hand, have to decide which I was the least aloof towards, and choose those teachers >_< lol.</p>
<p>@castleblack, your teacher can use the same exact letter he submitted for QB if he wants. Colleges are probably not going to read more than 2 letters anyway so it behooves students to use the same letters just as with recycling the essays. Any LOR more than the 2 required have to be saying something really really different or colleges do NOT appreciate them!</p>
<p>The way the recommendations work for QB or CA or any other app is there’s a page of questions with some boxes to check and sometimes “rate on a scale of 1-10 in the following categories” etc. But this is quick to fill out and the important part is the narrative they attach, which is the real LOR. Your teacher has already written that. In any case you can wait but if you’ll need the CA either way, go ahead and ask now so your teacher has time to prepare.</p>
<p>@honeybee63 Thank you so much for clarifying! I will definitely ask my teachers now then. </p>
<p>Just as a general philosophy, never make decisions for another person. Clearly ask your teacher for what you want, let him know you understand that he may not have the time to do it now, and leave the decision up to him. This is regarding the last sentence of your first paragraph; I realize it does not address your actual question.</p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool I will definitely follow your advice, thank you. </p>