Recommendation Letter with College Specified

<p>This is rather a dumb question, but here goes:</p>

<p>My son got 2 excellent recommendation letters from his college profs (cc, dual-credit classes) last year. Originally they were for a summer program, but then I realized that they would serve nicely as college recommendations. Thinking that I was so smart in thinking ahead, I had my son ask them to reprint the letters, but change the name from the summer program to 'University of Texas.' I thought then we'd have it covered for sure, because I thought at the time that the only 2 options he'd have would be either UT Austin or some other school in the UT system, so whichever school he chose, the letter would cover it.</p>

<p>Well, now he is applying to a few other schools as well. There is no way I'd want him to bother the profs again, since it's been 6 months and 1 year, respectively, since he was in their classes, and he already bothered 1 of them twice and the other 3 times.</p>

<p>So....should he just include the letters anyway, even though they are addressed to some other college?</p>

<p>He can probably get more letters from his new profs, but these are just SOOO good that it would be a shame not to use them.</p>

<p>Sending a recommendation letter to a college from a professor without that person's knowledge? Unless it is a "to whom it may concern" letter I would ALWAYS let the person who wrote it know how you are using it. My opinion -- YMMV.</p>

<p>Yeah, that's yet another angle to it. I know the profs would not mind at all - I am quite certain of that - but still, it's probably not an ethical thing to do, and the colleges would think it looked really bad, right? (I said it was a dumb question. Dang, I just wish there was some way he could use them!!!)</p>

<p>What I'd suggest is that your S contact the professors, thank them again for their previous help, give them an update and ask them for new letters. It really isn't a big deal.</p>

<p>Your S could even fax them a copy of the letters, and your S could retype the letters in "to whom it may concern" format and e-mail the retyped letters to the profs so they wouldn't have to retype tehm since the profs are unlikely to still have the originals. </p>

<p>I used to be a prof. Really, doing this is no big deal.</p>

<p>Thanks, Northstarmom. That's exactly what he did the 2nd time. One of them was gracious but the other seemed really busy so I felt a little sheepish asking for them to do it again.</p>