So I asked my teacher to write me a letter of recommendation for college and she finally finished it and gave me the copy of it today. She told me that our school does things differently since it is so old and that she doesn’t send the LOR. Instead, I am suppose to mail them myself.
She gave me 3 signed copies of it but I am applying to 20 colleges. I don’t want to hassle her with signing it 20 times so would it be okay if I photocopy the original signed copy? Will it be okay if the signature is copied instead of her signing it directly?
She also emailed me the LOR but it obviously won’t have her signature but will look a lot nicer than the photocopied ones.
Are any of the schools common app? Those can all be submitted online so hopefully that will decrease the number of paper copies you have to send.
Can the guidance counselor help? Can she scan and email them?
Yeah, most of the colleges I am applying to use common app. I don’t know how to submit it online though. Do I submit them online because my teacher doesn’t know how?
No, I actually had to ask my guidance counselor for a letter of recommendation too and she also did the same thing. She gave it to me and said that I should make copies and send them myself by mail.
You are fine with mailing them yourself. That is what I did and you certainly don’t need twenty signatures. Photocopies are fine
I asked my GC and she said that photocopying it will be fine but I can’t print them myself since then it won’t have the school’s letterhead. The problem is that photocopying it looks well, ugly. Is it okay? I photocopied it and you can definitely tell it is photocopied, it has wrinkles and color distortions. Maybe I should go to officedepot to get it photocopied but I think it will look the same?
If she had submitted it through guidance, they would have photocopied the letter.
She didn’t submit it through guidance. Basically as soon as she finished she just handed it to me. My school is very old fashioned…
Way back in the old days, the teacher would seal the envelope and sign the seal and you could mail.
What does seal the envelope mean? Do you mean put an actual seal or just lick the envelop and close it? The students in our school are responsible for mailing because my public school is cheap and doesn’t want to pay for stamps…
Just lick & close.
I would call each school and ask them what you should do though.
But I am applying to over 20 schools do I really have to call every school? I think if the colleges have questions concerning the LORs they can just call my school?
This is a very non-standard situation, so yes. You are not meant to handle the teachers recs.
I understand that she didn’t submit it through guidance. But the appearance would be the same if she had, and they had Xeroxed it.
And I agree-- a letter that you’ve had access to isn’t going to be of much value; there’s no way to determine who actually wrote the letter.
Well the letter has the school letterhead on top and I don’t think anyone but staff members has access to it. Granted, I think if you really wanted to you can Photoshop it on? Also, she gave me a special envelope to use to send to colleges. It has the school letterhead in front and the address return. I think colleges know if a letter is legit from the way the letter sounds, teachers write differently.
You need to call the schools. It is too risky.
So good news and bad news…
There was an error in the letter of recommendation in both my English teacher and my GC’s letter(my transcript wasn’t up to date with my GPA but they mentioned that GPA on the LOR). So I asked both of them to change it and they did. The only problem was that I mailed both letters by mail already a couple days ago and it had the old GPA mentioned. The good news is that after a bit of research and explaining, I got them both to submit their new LORs through the common app!
Can I email instead of calling the admissions office to let them know about this?
Can I just ask them to ignore those 2 LORs that they recived via mail and just look at the one that was uploaded in the common app?
Should I wait until I submit my application(tomorrow night) so they actually see it on the common app or do I need to email them right now?
Great! just submit. They will ignore the snail mail letters. I wouldn’t even worry about it;)
Submitted my apps on Friday!
Just to make sure, are you sure they won’t read the snail mail letters? On the admission portal it says that my snail mail letters were received a couple days before Friday.
So if they see that the LOR’s were uploaded on the common app, those letters take precedence over the snail mail letters correct?
Yes. They may read the snail mail, but will give greater weight to the common app ones, since they presume you never handled them.
Great job getting it worked out. It is As if you never had an issue at all now! Good luck!