I was planning on submitting a supplemental letter of recommendation for my Yale application, but the problem is that I probably won’t submit the Common App until January 1st (I know, it’s bad), so I can’t access the Status Portal to request it.
I sent them an email to ask and they said that it must be submitted by mail – is that true?? Is there an online option, such as the Application Material Upload Form for Educators that is on their website, or is that only for counselors or HS teachers?
The recommendor isn’t a teacher/counselor from my school so I’m worried they won’t check their email until after the holidays…is the deadline January 8th like the other supplemental materials, or does it have to be done by January 1st?
Sorry for the bombardment of questions, but I feel like their website is very confusing and when I sent them an email through the contact form, they didn’t really answer my questions at all.
Why are you questioning what Yale told you? If Admissions says it’s true, it’s TRUE! The instructions on the website are very clear: https://admissions.yale.edu/supplementary
FWIW: Your supplementary LoR can arrive after the deadline of January 2nd, however please realize that it generally takes someone about one to two weeks to write a well thought out, meaningful, substantive LoR. So, I would try to reach out to your supplementary writer by phone this week or next. And remember: https://admissions.yale.edu/supplementary
@gibby I know it seems really clear (and maybe I’m just dumb/sleep-deprived), but I still don’t completely understand it.
When I first checked, it said you can use mail OR the upload form, but the only form available was for counselors. I didn’t know if a non-counselor could still use it, so I sent them an email and two separate people told me that they had to be submitted by mail. The reason I was skeptical is because they were both students and they didn’t seem super sure of their answers, but anyway, I asked my recommendor and he said he’d send it by mail.
However, when I logged into the status portal yesterday after submitting my application, there was a form for submitting the STEM supplement with a research paper, etc. If you indicated you were submitting a recommendation, it popped up with a form to send a request by email. There was no option to say you already submitted the letter by mail.
The problem is that I don’t know if my recommendor already submitted the form by mail, and I don’t want to ask him to submit it again (because it’s an inconvenience and also because I don’t think Yale wants two copies).
At the same time, I need to submit the STEM supplement form,and that includes the letter.
I don’t really know how/whether to ask them about it, because on their website, it says not to “use the links below to submit a question regarding an active application or to submit application materials.” So where do I??
I’m sorry for such a long post, but I really don’t understand this, and I’m frustrated because I feel like they provide a lot of contradictory information with no way to contact them at all.
What’s the fear of sending it by mail?
Why distrust two emails back from admissions? You think Yale doesn’t have its act together?
You don’t know if he submitted a letter by mail? And you’re afraid of Y getting 2 copies of the same? You don’t think they can figure out one’s a duplicate?
But all this is the wrong use of energy.
Get the stem supplement in. Let the recommender mail the LoR, rather than all this fuss and muss. It’s now Jan 4.
It’s not a big deal. Just write an email to your recommendation writer, or ask them in person and say:
If they’ve mailed the recommendation in already; you’re done. If they haven’t yet mailed it in, give the recommendation writer the form and have them mail in the recommendation with the form.
If the form contains information the recommendation writer needs to complete, give them the form, and with your apologies, ask them to complete the form and mail it to Yale. It’s really that simple.
It’s not that I don’t “trust” the admissions emails per se, it’s just that they contradicted each other and so I didn’t know which one to follow.
Anyway, the reason I didn’t submit the form is because you can’t submit it until you either send an email to your recommendor or check the box saying you’re not sending one (which obviously I didn’t want to do).
You’re both right, though – I ended up just submitting the supplemental form and sending the email anyway.
@lookingforward, it’s not that I don’t think they can figure it out if they get two, it’s just that they seem sort of hostile towards receiving any additional materials at all, much less two copies (although I am sure I want to submit an extra letter). They also make it clear they don’t want you to contact them unless absolutely necessary, so to me it just comes off a little cold/hostile in general. I don’t know. It makes sense for an Ivy League university that gets bombarded by emails/questions/materials from students, but I guess I’m just used to a different type of school.
