Hello,
I cannot get a hold of my counselor for a letter of recommendation, student profile and transcript. Can I use the principal for these things instead?
What do you mean you can’t get a hold of them? Their job is to do this stuff for you. If they are out on leave or something similar, your school needs to provide a substitute. You might want to email your admissions rep about the situation.
Isn’t your HS on winter break? Often times counselors are not reachable during school breaks, unless the school has some known process for communications during breaks.
Typically an applicant can submit the app, and recs and transcripts can be sent later. I would not contact your principal or AO.
Completely overlooked that possibility @Mwfan1921. OP needs to give specifics.
Yes, we are on break. App is due before we get back.
What is the process for requesting transcripts at your school? I expect nothing is going to happen during break and that students were supposed to plan ahead for deadlines that occur during break, but again not many colleges require materials sent by the HS to be in by the application deadline. But you need to submit your part of the application by the deadline.
What college are we talking about?
It depends on the school. The deadline for students is almost always before the deadline for transcripts and other stuff from the counselor.
We’re talking about MIT. This is the MIT forum, no?
This application is for MIT.
Unfortunately I think I have the answer to my question. I don’t think they’ll accept the application without the recommendations, which will be late because we are on holiday.
Got it.
Not sure what you were thinking with regard to MIT’s clearly stated deadlines for recs and school profile and that date falls during winter break. Certainly bad planning. At my kids’ high school there would be no way to send these components by Jan 1 because there would be no access to the counselors or other admins as they are on their holiday.
People respond to threads here on CC not just to help the original poster but for other students reading these posts.
It’s perfectly reasonable to point out to pay attention to deadlines and plan ahead.
While it doesn’t help you to have that pointed out, it could help another student avoid a similar problem.
At my D’s HS all requests for LORs and transcripts were due weeks before the deadlines. Not a chance anyone would have been reachable during winter break.
Are you still in HS or a transfer student? If you are a transfer the deadline isn’t until March.
I’m guessing OP is a HS student since they stated that the deadline is before break is over. @sarah38 Your best hope is to call MIT directly and ask what you can do. They might not get back to you though since it is break. You might also want to talk to your counselors when you get back to school and tell them to fix the LOR process to make it easier for students in the future (i.e. having in-house deadlines, etc.). To future students reading this thread: have your LOR finalized at least a week before your deadline, even if the LOR deadline is after yours.
@izrk02 - I would have thought so too especially with the contacting the principle comment but the OP has other threads dating back from '16 saying she was accepted to UCLA and Davis and taking classes. Another thread says she’s a mom of three. Something doesn’t add up here.
@momofsenior1 That’s odd. Something’s up.
Sounds like OP is an adult with a family who took some time off after HS and is now applying to college. Perhaps she is not in High School but attempting to get in touch with the counselor from the high school that she graduated from. In that case I guess she did miss the deadline. Had she been in high school she probably would have received a reminder from her counselor prior to break. Below is a copy of the letter that DD20 received on Dec 15, 2019.
Class of 2020 (and parents!):
First – best of luck finishing up final exams this week! You’ve got this – finish the term strong!!
Second - a few reminders and announcements from the College Office as we prepare to head into break.
- DECISIONS:
- Please report all Early Action and Early Decision results to your counselor in a timely fashion. We are here to help! But, we also need to know how you are doing to celebrate with you, give words of encouragement when necessary and/or advise you effectively. Many decisions have already been released. If you have not updated your counselor, please do so before you leave for break. Many more will release this week – again, please notify your counselor with results.
- NAVIANCE - COLLEGES I AM APPLYING TO:
- Please check your “colleges I am applying to list” on Naviance. Or, stop by the office to confirm it with your counselor in person. Check THREE things: are the colleges listed on Naviance the correct schools? Are the dates of application correct (Regular Decision, Early Action II, etc.)? And if you are applying to a school Early Decision II, is it marked correctly?
If anything is incorrect on your Naviance list, you must email your counselor or stop by the office before you leave for break. If you are applying to schools with a Jan. 1st – Jan 6th deadline, this is even more important.
PLEASE NOTE: The College Counseling Office will be closed from Dec. 21st – Jan. 5th. It will reopen Monday, January 6th. Given the way the calendar falls this year, we will push out all supporting documents (teacher recs, transcripts, etc.) to colleges with deadlines between January 1st and January 5thBEFORE we leave for break. That way, all supporting credentials will arrive in time. We will then file the mid-year report, which is required, when we return January 6th. Don’t worry – this will not be considered late. Colleges understand mid-year reports often aren’t available until mid-January.
Again, if you are applying to schools with January 1st – January 5th deadlines, we need to know that before you leave for break. Please check your “colleges I am applying to” list on Naviance. For schools with January 15th and February 1st deadlines, you do not need to worry – we will have plenty of time to file documents when we return.
If you know you are applying Early Decision II, but you are not sure where yet, you will need to coordinate with your individual counselor about this. Counselors can sign the counselor Early Decision agreement remotely, but there will need to be a plan in place for how and when you will notify your counselor. You must also mark the school as Early Decision II in your Common Application before the form will populate on Naviance for your counselor to sign. That’s just how the system works!
If you do not check your “colleges I am applying to” list and you do not inform your counselor of any discrepancies, we cannot guarantee that your supporting credentials will be sent in on time. Thank you for your attention to this!!
- COMMON APPLICTION:
- Please make sure that your list on Naviance mirrors your list on your common application account for your common application schools.
- Please remove any common application schools that you are no longer applying to from your common application account so they don’t continue to pull over to Naviance during the syncing phase.
- Please make sure all schools you intend to apply to are listed on your common application. Unfortunately, for common application schools, we cannot send documents unless you have added the school to your common application first. Again, that’s just how the system works. You don’t have to have completed the application for us to send supporting documents – the school just has to be listed in your common app.
- If you are applying to a common application school using another application (coalition, school specific, etc.), you must inform your counselor so we can make the necessary changes on Naviance to be able to file your supporting documents.
- And, for any non-common application schools: the only way your counselor will know you are applying is if you notify them. There is no syncing function between Naviance and non-common app schools.
- OTHER THOUGHTS:
- List balance: whether you have already applied to schools, or aren’t planning on applying until January, you need to keep list balance in mind as you finalize your schools.
- If you already have an acceptance in hand, you can be more flexible with your final list, assuming your acceptance is affordable for your family and is a place you would be happy attending.
- If you do not have an acceptance in hand, you need to make sure there is appropriate balance in your list. The College Office recommends having at least two “likely” options, and we prefer three. College admissions is difficult to predict – you need to make sure you have at least two schools that we consider great fits on all parameters (testing, course of study, GPA, etc.). If you choose not to include “likely” options in your final list, you do so against the advice of the College Office and may not have as many (or any) options at the end of the process.
- Lastly, while final list choices are ultimately yours to make, the College Office also recommends that no final list have more than 35%-40% “Reach” or “Far Reach” schools. This will ensure choice at the end of the process and will also reduce the impact that repeated rejections can have on students.
Please reach out to your individual counselor with any questions or concerns!
Counselors will be checking email periodically over break, but you should not assume they will be checking it every day or multiple times a day (as they would during a normal school week). Also, be mindful of timing – if you send your counselor an email at 10pm the day before an application is due, you should not expect to hear back from them – they may have already gone to bed!
Best of luck with finals. And enjoy a well-deserved break! We look forward to finishing up the process with you when you return in the New Year!
College Counseling Office
@Sarah38 Send in by the deadline the part of your application that you have control over. The recs can come late. Hopefully your counselor doesn’t mind that you waited until the last minute to ask them for a rec. MIT has a specific form they want filled out with specific questions, so your counselor can’t easily copy and paste a generic letter they may have sent to other schools on your behalf.
Thank you all for responding. I am the OP, not the student but posed as my son, the student, to simplify the question. Back in ‘16 I applied to several UCs and ultimately ended up attending Berkeley. My son is applying to MIT and Stanford. There is some interesting information here, but nothing correct. I have since found out everything I needed to know, gotten all the letters of recommendation we needed and my son has finished his app. Back a few years ago I asked a simple question about SIRing to 2 different UCs and was met with judgement and shaming. My questions weren’t answered by anyone who actually knew what they were talking about. I was just harassed by posters who didn’t have the correct information but had plenty of criticism. They called me “dishonest”. I was very upfront and honest with UCLA and Berkeley and they were fine with my actions. It was the internet that was judgmental. I say this because I came across some of this same thing again, here. People will be quick to say, “what were you thinking?!!” And shame you, even when they really don’t have the answers. I was still a little sore from my last experience on this site. Now, I’ve solved this problem without the help of this site and in spite of the criticism. I think we need to be kinder to one another. And stop trying to guess the answer to mysteries. Someone here made up a whole story about me in their head and it was completely wrong.
Anyway, problem solved, application complete, sometimes things happen out of our control and our applications are late. If you knew our story you would keep your criticism to yourselves. My son is an amazing person. He has a heart of gold and an incredible brain. He simply was not able to get his app in early, and that’s ok. There’s not much you can’t fix without serious determination. I think that’s the biggest lesson here, aside from be kind, don’t assume you know what’s going on in someone’s life, and don’t answer a question on the MIT site unless you know the answer.