I was wondering if teachers will be able to see what colleges I’m NOT sending their letters of recommendation to. I’m thinking about asking one of my current teachers for one, but he has said he wants his letter to be sent to every college I apply to. Is this something he will be able to check or will he be able to see that I applied to other colleges without his LOR?
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Why wouldn’t you want this letter sent to all the colleges you are applying to?
I’m applying for different majors and feel like for some of them, other teachers are familiar with my work and passion towards them. It is a little weird to be honest, but his LOR would be very helpful towards one major, while it’s probably not as strong for another.
Unless one major is an arts major and the other isn’t, I don’t think that an LOR will be helpful in one major vs another.
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I think it’s more about you as a person - that you have passion, what you bring, what value you add, the type of human you are, etc.
You shouldn’t need more than two teacher recs. You don’t need 3 or 5 or 7 to fit in a different one for each school.
You are applying to a major…they aren’t. They are supporting (or not supporting) you as a person.
It is a lot of work for a teacher to write a LOR.
If all of your schools require 2 or fewer LORs, ask 2 teachers that fit the requirements for all schools (such as 1 humanities and 1 STEM).
If you have any schools that require 3 LORs, you will need to ask 3 teachers to write LORs. In that case, for some schools (that only require 2), you will end up picking 2 out of the 3 to send.
One of my kids sent different LOR to different schools. They also had more than one version of their personal statement and, for each school, chose the one that one best complimented the rest of their application.
I don’t know if teachers are notified that their LOR is downloaded by a college. If so, a teacher might realize that their letter was not downloaded. If they don’t know what colleges you are applying to then it might not matter.
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Don’t think the teacher has the time or interest to know where their recs go to. My son’s school they were just uploaded and he used the same 2, for every college. I wouldn’t really over think this. A good /great rec will serve it’s purpose whenever it goes to.
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I’ve done the recommendation letter role in the common app and no, recommenders can’t see who you are selecting as references for different schools on your list. That may be different if you aren’t using the common app.
Do you see if/when a school uploads your letter?
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