<p>D doesn't know what to do about this one. Do you waive the right to see your teacher/counselor recommendations or not?</p>
<p>yes you waive them The college is going to have some concerns if you were concerned the teacher might write something negative.</p>
<p>I think that you should waive it. I mean it might offend your teacher as well that you don't trust them to write something nice. I mean there is nothing wrong with asking for a copy of a letter of reccomendation because you can reuse it for other colleges and scholarships. But I think it is rude to ask to see a form that you can never use again.</p>
<p>My parents were wondering about this.</p>
<p>You can waive your rights to read your recs on the Rice App, but not on the Common App. Would this be a reason to choose the Rice App over the Common App?</p>
<p>I think the common app has a disclaimer addressed to the teacher/counselor that advises them that the law allows for a student to request access to the recommendation as a part of their record....but the common app doesn't ask a student to legally waive (or retain) the right to request the record....as does Rice. I've heard that some other colleges (Penn, Stanford...) who do not use the common do ask for a waiver of rights.</p>
<p>But after thinking about it, I do agree that, when asked, an applicant is probably wise to waive their rights, if only to give more weight to the recommendation. Admissions counselors may feel a recommendation is not freely written or a candidate freely endorsed if the rights are explicitly retained.</p>
<p>Since you say that waiving the student's right to read increases credibility...</p>
<p>Would a recommendation letter attached to the Common App carry less weight than one coming from the Rice App?</p>
<p>No I don't think so....because the commonapp student is not taking an explicit action to retain the rights. The disclaimer is just there in the fine print on the common app and there is no opportunity for the student to waive or retain. Actually proactively retaining the rights is something that may jump out to admissions counselor...is my main point.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification. That's kind of what I thought too, because a college that offers the commonapp should theoretically be okay with the format of all affiliated commonapp forms.</p>
<p>Agree Jimmy. And I do believe the Rice adcoms when they say they give equal consideration to the common app and the Rice app...they really drilled that when D and I visited last month. </p>
<p>D just opted for the online Rice app because she is applying ID and got started on that one first. She started her online commonapp only last week. And of course, there are a couple of safeties here in Texas, so she'll also have to do the online Texas commonapp.</p>