My son has attended full-time dual enrollment as a junior and senior, with no courses at the high school. His high school requires students to use Naviance for teacher recommendations to be submitted via Common App. Unfortunately, there is no option for college teachers to submit student recommendations in Naviance, since Naviance is linked to the high school. The only other option I can see is for the college professors to directly mail the individual letters to the colleges, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble for college professors (especially since all his classes were remote, so he has never actually met any of his professors). My other thought was to request the college professors to submit their recommendations as “Additional/General Recommenders”, but then he still won’t meet the requirement for 2 academic recommendations that many of the colleges require. Is there any way around this limitation in Naviance? I thought about having him switch to the Coalition App, which DOES permit recommenders from outside the school, but unfortunately not all the colleges he is applying to will accept Coalition App, so that still doesn’t solve the issue. Are we just out of luck?
So frustrating. I understand what you mean because i saw on my D22’s account that Common App gives that message about Naviance and essentially blocks a student from requesting recommenders.
My D20 had the opposite problem because she left a naviance school and her recommendation was deleted in CommonApp because it recognized the email address of the teacher as being from a Naviance user. D20 no longer had access to Naviance so she couldn’t use it, and CommonApp basically told us there was no way around it. Her schools where she was applying told her to have her teacher email the letter and form directly to them with her Common App ID number included in the email. Not ideal but certainly less work than mailing. You could have your child provide a list of hyperlinks to make it easier for the teachers. Or provide stamped, addressed envelopes to the schools. Good luck!
How unimaginably frustrating! That’s a good idea with emailing recommendations and creating a list of email links for the teachers…we will reach out to those schools and get their input. Thanks for the suggestion!
Could the high school counselor receive the recommendations and send to the colleges for you? If he is doing de through the high school maybe this has come up before and they know how to handle it.
I asked the counselor and she didn’t offer to receive his recommendations, but that is a good thought. Her only suggestion was for the professors to mail the recommendations directly to the colleges, but again, that seems like way too much trouble for them, especially since he has never met them in real life (since everything has been remote). I will ask her if she can possibly receive the recommendations on his behalf, maybe via email and then upload them to Naviance. Thanks for the idea!
Let us know if you get a response about whether a counselor can assist. We just realized that my D22 has a similar problem because one of her teachers she wants to use for a recommendation is no longer at her high school. She’s still in our school district but moved to a neighboring high school this year. We saw today that she doesn’t appear on the Naviance drop down list of teachers on the recommendation request page, which apparently is limited to teachers at D’s campus. This Naviance/Common App partnership and restrictions can be really frustrating to navigate if a student’s circumstances don’t fit squarely in their box.
Has anyone had any luck with counselors assisting? My son’s primary recommender left his school over the summer yet his counselor said he could select her name from the drop down list (she was still listed…) which he did. His teacher emailed him yesterday that Naviance won’t let her upload the letter, noting a deadline of 2/2/21. His counselor doesn’t seem to know a way around, and I hate for his recommender to have to send 17! emails.
Any luck with working with Naviance directly?
For us, D’s counselor said the teacher can’t be added back into Naviance because it’s restricted to teachers at the school. She suggested assigning the teacher as an “Other Recommender” in CommonApp but I looked at that evaluation form and it’s not the same as what a teacher completes so I don’t think she should do that. We’re just going to provide stamped, addressed envelopes along with a hyperlinked list of email addresses and template she can copy and paste with D’s CommonApp number and let the teacher decide how she wants to send the letters.
We decided to use the Coalition App instead, which isn’t linked to Naviance at all. Unfortunately, that won’t work for the 4-5 schools on his list that only use Common App. His counselor has offered to allow teachers to email her the letter and she will post to Naviance, so if that works out, it could be a work-around.
Update: we figured out a way to work around this issue. First, we listed his high school and linked his Naviance to Common App. The guidance counselor uploaded his transcript, school report, etc. Then, after verifying that she had uploaded everything that was needed, he went in and changed the high school to “My high school is not listed here”. He then manually re-entered the school’s info. Fortunately, the counselors report and transcript did not get deleted despite unlinking Naviance. Once he saved these changes, he now had the option to directly request teacher recommendations in Common App. The only issue I see moving forward is that his counselor now no longer has access to his Common App for uploading mid year grades, but we may experiment with re-linking the Common App back up to Naviance or else perhaps she can manually submit mid year grades via email. In any event, it was worth the effort to enable his professors to only have to submit one recommendation rather than emailing to multiple colleges. Fingers crossed no more issues!