<p>I understand what the waiver is about, and I saw a comment in another thread here saying it's customary to waive the right to access.</p>
<p>Is it in poor taste to not waive rights? A small part of me wants to read the recommendations (and one of my teachers offered to show it to me), but if it's tacky and tactless i'd rather not end up in that situation. I wouldn't want to offend my teachers.</p>
<p>Also, who can see whether i've waived my rights or not? I'm assuming my counselor can but my recommending teachers can't. And out of curiosity, what would you do?</p>
<p>Everything I’ve read says to waive your rights. I’m pretty sure that your teachers can see whether you’ve waived your rights or not too since I think you have to check that box for each time you request an official. I’m with you on wanting to see the letter (I mean who wouldn’t want to know what their teacher thinks of them, right?) but I don’t think it’s worth it if your teachers and counselors and the admissions counselors all believe that the letters could possibly be uncredible or skewed in some way.</p>
<p>You should waive your rights to see the letters. Some teachers won’t even write if the students don’t waive - either because the teacher is being brutally honest (which might not be a good thing for some students), OR because the teacher is stretching to try and get the student into good colleges (which would be a good thing for all students). In the second scenario, teachers may not want to give students a false sense of themselves while they are still in HS. You should waive, and make sure you pick your teachers well, then you should be pretty confident in what they will write about you - even if you don’t know exactly what they may have written.</p>
<p>Your FERPA selection applies across all recommenders, which means that each of them will know what your choice is. You should consult with your counselor and parents before making a decision, and you might also consider asking a college or two about the implications of waiving/not waiving.</p>
<p>As for you comment that you’d like to read the letters, make sure you understand this: if you chose not to waive your rights, the only potential opportunity you have to review the recommendations would be at the college where you ultimately enroll, and even then ONLY IF the college saves the recommendations.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think i’ll waive them. I want my teachers to write as honest of a recommendation if they can and I can definitely understand how not waiving it might hurt that.</p>
<p>Wanting to read your teachers’ letters is a perfectly understandable, probably almost universal, human desire.</p>
<p>But you really need to waive those rights anyway. If it’s any consolation, virtually nobody who’s applying to college likes it any better than you do.</p>