I think walking around can be very helpful especially if you are allowed in some buildings but even if you can’t get in the buildings it’s nice to just see the other students to see if your student feels like they will fit in.
We just did two college tours on Friday and D22 didn’t feel like she had many questions that weren’t answered by the tour guide but she felt like just walking around the campuses and seeing the students and facilities she got a good read on whether she felt like she’d fit in or not.
Question: How does the teacher recommendation function on the Common App work? Do teachers submit one recommendation, which is then used for all colleges that a student assigns for that teacher, or do they have to complete a separate form for each college to which they are assigned?
Does the counselor recommendation work the same way?
We’re wondering because, if D22 adds new schools towards the end of the year (i.e., near the early Jan deadlines), she doesn’t want to rush her teachers.
This is something you should ask your counselors. In our case, teachers and counselors upload letters of rec into Scoir (like Naviance). Once D hits the “applied” button it sends a message to the counselor to send supporting documents. THEY send the letters (theirs and teachers), transcripts, school stats and course rigor info…
Thanks. I don’t think D22’s school here in the UK has Scoir or Naviance. They use Unifrog for UK university applications but probably not enough students apply to the US to warrant purchasing special software/services.
Another question about LORs — how to send a letter of recommendation she received earlier this summer from her boss at her internship? She has the PDF.
It would be better if the letter came directly from her boss than her.
She could add her boss as a recommender to the common app (if that’s what she uses) and assigned him to schools that accept recommendation from a supervisor. That will automatically trigger an email sent to the boss. They would then create a common app recommender account and upload the letter.
If she wants to use the pdf version of the letter herself, she may need to contact the colleges and ask how to go about it.
A follow-up question: This letter is from the head of a university think tank in a field directly related to my daughter’s proposed major. It’s a fantastic recommendation — she has worked closely with my daughter for three years. It adds tremendous value to her application.
If schools just say they want teacher recommendations, should she send anyway? It seems like AOs would want to see it, but she wouldn’t want to annoy them.
From what I have gathered, a good rule of thumb is to send a supplemental recommendation when it is both substantive and different enough from the main recommendations. Sounds like that fits well for your daugther’s situation!
When you add a recommender, you assign them a role - teacher, clergy, other, …
When you assign a recommender to a college, you can choose only from the recommenders that match the college requirements. If the college wants teachers only, you won’t be able to select a recommender who is listed under other. We ran into this with S20 as well as S22.
Since we’re still on the Common App, my D22 just did a “Review and Submit” review for one of her schools and, for some reason, her SAT scores did not appear (even though she selected “Yes” for the “Please consider my ACT/SAT results” question). Would you know how to fix this? Thanks.
That’s strange. You mean she selected it for this particular school not just in the general section where you can enter the SAT/ACT scores?
I have no idea how to correct that besides double checking everything that has to do with this particular college. Another question, does the school accept self-reported scores or do they require official scores sent directly from the College Board?
Yes, she selected the option for her SAT scores to be considered in the college-specific section and also entered her scores in the general Common App section. She double-checked and re-entered her SAT scores but the problem remains. The college does allow self-reporting.
I think I will ask the Common App via chat tomorrow. Thanks for your responding. Much appreciated.
This happened to my D for Temple. She submitted ACT scores and the PDF spit out empty lines, but all others showed. They did require official scores so I gave up on figuring out why, but agree its annoying. Hope you get it settled easily.
Thanks, @tumagmom. Good to know it might be a system issue (and not just us doing something wrong). If it persists, the schools allow e-mailing the scores directly or uploading on their portals.
I’ve submitted transfer LOR on Common App and after checking with our counselor, confirmed that directly through Common App, we just submit the LOR but don’t mention school-specific names. Once it’s submitted into Common App, the student then fills out their individual school app w/in the Common App platform and then they can choose which ones to add. My son had 3 teachers submit for LOR, so he just cycled among the three, depending on how many each school requested. I think 3 was the most that we saw.