When asking for recommendations from teachers on common app. If you are uncertain which school you are assigning them to so don’t assign to any school in particular, will the common app generate the invite email to the teachers? Or do we need to assign to a school first? TIA
In the end you decide which school the LOR goes to even if you selected a school when you sent the request.
Thxs. Son is applying ED and invited teachers for LOR without assigning school. He’ll choose the LORs to send when he applies but we (parents) are worried the teachers might not have gotten email request because he didn’t specify school yet.
He should be able to see the status on the Common App. Then when he applies to the specific schools there will be a drop-down menu with all his LOR’s that he can choose from.
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We looked on the common app. And it shows as invited. So I believe that should mean they were sent. Thxs for response🙂
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Actually. We did a test, added ourselves as a recommender and didn’t receive an email invite. Only after assigning to a random college did we get invited to write a LOR.
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I thought you had to pick a college when you submitted it but you still select the actual letters to each school before you submit the application. We just used UGA even though it was a safety, just to have something, plus they took applications earlier than most schools. Both daughters did ED after that along with a few other schools. We held a bunch to wait for ED results and both got their ED schools so we were happy to be done early.
Congrats on getting the schools of choice. That’s awesome! Hopefully we’ll be in same boat mid December.
Wishing you luck! Now you just have to try not to annoy the teachers for the letters while making sure they get them done early for ED. 
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m letting my D know as I don’t think she would’ve known to assign a college to the teacher.
You’re welcome. I’m glad to be able to help.
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There is a human side and a technical side to the LOR.
He should talk to the teachers and formally request that they write an LOR. This gives him a chance to remind them of all the great things he has been up to. And if the teacher does not feel comfortable writing a letter they can figure out how to navigate that so the student can find someone else to ask. Teachers should not just get the LOR prompt from CommonApp or Naviance with no previous heads up.
On the technical side-
If the school is using Naviance, there are settings the school has to give the counselor control to assign or give the student control to assign (remember the student can not see the letter either way).
Once a teacher has done a recommendation in common app their letter will be the same for all colleges that teacher is assigned to. There used to be some variance in Naviance for this, but no longer.
Yes. We are totally aware of the personal aspect and so very much appreciate the amount of effort teachers have during the last months of the year. I can’t imagine. His school is a decent size public. So each teacher is likely to have more than a few requests! He has been in contact with his teachers and has definitely talked with them about LORs previously. So an email invite was expected.
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