Supplemental LOR from internship supervisor

Applying to College
1

<p>My son spent most of the summer doing an internship at a lab. He was surprised to get the internship, and the people at the lab were in turn surprised how helpful it was that he was there (he's a good programmer with strong math skills). Anyway, long story short: he's going to ask for a LOR from the head scientist at the lab. His HS's college adviser is on vacation so my son can't contact her except in case of emergency (which this doesn't seem to be :) ), so I'm asking the question here.</p>

<p>How is this normally handled?<br>
His teachers' and adviser's recommendations, from what I understand, are submitted through Naviance. Does his LOR writer send a hardcopy recommendation to the HS counselor? Does he send an email for easy uploading to Naviance?<br>
Is this LOR a good idea (it is quite likely to be glowing)?<br>
Is there anything special that would be useful to mention/request from the LOR writer (I'm not sure that he's an experienced LOR writer)?</p>

<p>BTW, it's a good thing that my son doesn't get as flustered as I do about these things :)</p>

2

<p>Then there’s the option to just wait until the college counselor is back from vacation, but my son would rather not wait until then to make the request.</p>

3

<p>I haven’t used Naviance, but I know that you can’t submit supplemental LORs electronically on the CA. In general, they have to go hard copy, straight to the college. Look at the college websites for instructions, for instance (see the Extra Recommendations section at the end):</p>

<p>[Supplementary</a> Materials | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/supplementary]Supplementary”>Supplementary Materials | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>

<p>If it’s very strong, and if the school permits supplementary materials, 1 extra LOR is reasonable. The reason to submit a supplemental LOR is for the recommender to discuss a different aspect of the candidate than what the teacher & GC LORs say; it’s not good for a supplemental to just reiterate what has been addressed in the required LORs.</p>