<p>Some of my schools show recos as "Submitted" and some as "Downloaded". Does downloaded mean that the school now has the reco? And submitted mean that they have access but haven't downloaded it? Seems to make sense but I wasn't sure.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Yes. It is exactly as you said. “Submitted” means it si submitted to CA by the teacher. “Downloaded” means it is downloaded to the school. Some schools download everyday, others may take more than a week.</p>
<p>So are the recommendations and school report (that show as submitted) automatically sent to the school when you submit the Common App?</p>
<p>No. First your counselor and teacher submit to CA. Then the college will download it at their schedule. Nevertheless, the last step only happens after you submit the application. Thr first step can be any time after you invited the recommender.</p>
<p>OK, so teachers, counselor and kid have all done their part. The university must now choose to download the recommendations and reports that have been submitted. I hope they do that soon.<br>
Thanks billcsho. Very helpful.</p>
<p>Not sure is this is 100% correct. I applied to UNC and it says on the common app my letter of rec was submitted but when I check on the UNC webiste it says they received my letter of rec. In other words it does not say download but the school has my letter of recommendation</p>
<p>^ Do you still trust the CA site these days?
Some schools do frequent download and may update either faster than CA. If you see it stuck in “submitted” on your CA but it said received at the school, you probably want to follow up on that.</p>
<p>My kid has one stuck in “started.” The recommender is certain that everything has been completed, but the system is not recording the LOR as received. </p>
<p>Since I no longer trust anything posted on the CA website, I checked one of the kid’s accounts at a school, and it appears that the LOR has not been recorded as submitted.</p>
<p>We are stuck. The recommender swears the LOR was completed and submitted, CA support says “be sure the recommender submitted and did not just save the recommendation.” That’s not helpful.</p>
<p>Now what? Has anyone found a fix to this problem?</p>
<p>When in doubt(which is all the time with the CA), send by mail. My son has sent all his LOR’s by mail so far.</p>
<p>If we send them by mail, do we remove the recommender’s name from the “Assign Recommenders” page online?</p>
<p>I would leave it. As an example, I contacted Georgia Tech about the issues our school was having using Naviance to upload LORs/transcripts/etc. They said to mail it, but also submit it online via Naviance/CommonApp when that becomes functional, just to be sure. So, I would keep trying via CA but mail it as a backup.</p>
<p>Thanks. Perhaps we will mail for the EA school and wait on the others.</p>
<p>Good plan. There are schools(Stanford for one example) that have mailing labels you print out when you are going to mail something to assure they get to the right spot quickly.</p>
<p>Some schools only download from CA once a while. So it may appear as submitted on CA for days or even over a week. But you should definitely follow up with the school before it is getting close to the deadline. It could be simply that school has trouble in downloading.</p>
<p>If you do submit the LOR by mail, the status would not be updated on CA. After all, only the application status at the school site counts. My D actually has a supplement shown as submitted by the school could not download it even it shows as downloaded at the school. We ended up sending it by e-mail as attachment. The adcom really appreciate we identified the problem and save them some trouble. Usually, the school will contact you if you have something missing but you should take control of that.</p>
<p>It is not even appearing as submitted – it still says “started.”</p>
<p>^ That may mean the teacher has trouble in uploading. It is a typical problem. You may ask them to retry. You probably want to refresh the invitation (the clockwise arrow) so they will get another e-mail.</p>
<p>OK, now that everything has been received.</p>
<p>Common App submitted Oct. 12 - All Recs and Reports already in and submitted to CA.
Payment recorded Oct. 15
Receipt of Common App shown on school website Oct. 16 (late in the day)
Receipt of Recommendations and School Report shown on school website Oct. 18th</p>
<p>Everything was done online - no Naviance. Columbus Day was in there - not sure if that is a holiday. There were no glitches or problems. </p>
<p>I am just posting this so people realize that if you submit your Common App on Oct. 31, it will still take about 5 days to be received complete. You may want to get everything in a few days earlier.</p>
<p>^ Don’t worry. It seems the school down the day it was submitted. It is actually pretty good. Most of my D’s submission show a day or 2 behind CA submission in the schools portal. I would not worry about it as long as you got a correct date stamp at CA.</p>
<p>Just checked with college and even though LOR says submitted and not downloaded on CA they received it</p>
<p>The CA site is totally unreliable. Make sure you check the school portal disregarding what CA said. My D has one school that shows only downloaded the counselor recommendation but not the teachers’ recommendation although the latter was uploaded a week earlier.</p>