<p>how do i know? He wrote me an email saying he was put off by the amt of time I gave him (but will still be abled to finish it). I am sooo worried, how am i supposed to respond to that? I gave him 5 days for an online rec, so there is no postage involved. (I really thought that was a reasonable amount of time..) He had also already written my rec (letter format) during the summer but not in the format my school wanted it in (grr Penn). How should I respond to that besides saying im really really sorry, because I am. Should I tell him that colleges are lenient about teacher recs coming in on time??</p>
<p>This must be a public school?</p>
<p>why do you say that?</p>
<p>I cannot imagine a teacher at a private school making such a comment during the last push for applications........poor attitude on his part.</p>
<p>It's probably my fault. But I really thought 5 days for an online rec was enough. Dont you?</p>
<p>I guess it depends if your teacher is on a traveling holiday.......then 5 days isn't enough. What guidelines did your school set out at the beginnning of this? I'd say there is probably more to this story than you are telling.</p>
<p>guidelines for getting teacher recs? there are none, you are responsible to get them on your own. I don't think he's on holiday...He's in China [teaching there currently]</p>
<p>Most schools have a deadline for submitting your list of schools and also making the requests for recs. I guess i don't know how to answer your question. Five days seems ok as he had written for you before. Maybe he is really busy teaching now.....that would complicate his schedule.</p>
<p>It's usually considered best to give at least two weeks for a recommendation, even if the teacher has already written the letter beforehand. Five days is still manageable, though. I would tell him that you are just looking for a basic recommendation and are not expecting him to put in hours of work on this. Tell him you're sorry about the short notice, but that all the school needs is for him to paste in sections of the letter he has already written for you. </p>
<p>I haven't seen an application that couldn't be completed by pasting in chunks of an existing recommendation letter - what about this university's format is such a problem?</p>
<p>UPenn's rec form asks lots of specific questions while he did his in a letter form. My teacher also complained that they gave him only 300 chars max allotted space. (which was not so great of U Penn)</p>
<p>"What do you know of this student's intellectual qualities? What are you impressions of the student's academic priorities? We are especially interested in any evidence you can give about the nature of his/her motivation for academic work -- the breadth and depth of intellectual interest --the originality, independence and sensitivity he/she displays in course work -- the quality of performance as compared to that of his/her classmates."</p>
<p>MaryCeleste is right about the general 2 week guideline. I think you are generally supposed to give the recommender a miminum of at least 2 weeks to write the recommendation. Given that he had recently written a letter for you, however, it is understandable that you thought 5 days was enough. The best thing to do right now is email back right away just letting him know that you're terribly sorry for any inconvenience and gently explain why you thought it was enough time to write in 5 days (ie he already has a letter that he can use for you). The teacher may not have saved it or something though, so just let him know that you're sorry and that you hope he will still consider writing a letter for you. I think you should leave out the part about 'it doesn't have to be that great' because the teacher might actually take that as a sign of you not being interested. Just explain that this is important to you and you'd appreciate his support and wish him a happy holiday and then stop worrying! :) Good luck.</p>
<p>I agree with MaryCeleste. It takes far more time than students can imagine to write a good recommendation. Teachers not only have to prepare lesson plans, grade papers, etc., but they also have their own family obligations to take care of. And, of course, they have to do recommendations for lots of students.</p>
<p>Even though he did a recc for you before, he may not still have that recc. Even if he has it, he may wish to update it so as to give you the best chances of getting into your college.</p>
<p>If the 5 days notice that you gave him meant that he had 5 days to do it during winter break or at the extremely busy end of semester time in Dec., then that also was asking a lot of him as he probably is traveling, spending time with his family, etc.</p>
<p>My suggestion is to apologize and also let him know that you appreciate how he's making time to do your recommendation despite the squeeze on his time.</p>
<p>If the deadline is January 1st. What time zone is it? It's for U Penn, so, would it be EST? Even then you'd still have January 1st to do it, right? (up until January 2nd 12 AM EST)</p>
<p>i think 5 days is pretty bad.... our school mostly we have to have the forms to our teachers a month ahead of time. transcript requests have to be in 3 wks ahead of the deadline. esp if he's in china, and you're doing this all through email, i would have given him more time.</p>
<p>"Even then you'd still have January 1st to do it, right? (up until January 2nd 12 AM EST)"</p>
<p>You think that teachers' idea of a fun Christmas break is writing recommendations for students who gave recommendations at the last second?</p>
<p>You think that teachers never do anything but teach, write recommendations, grade papers? They never have family outings, go on vacations, throw parties, go to parties?</p>
<p>If that's what you think, sure the teacher would be glad to spend time on New Years writing recommendations in the middle of the night!</p>
<p>I didn't mean it that way. I just wanted to make sure if the time zone was right so he'd have extra time to do it since he's in China teaching (up until 1pm January 2nd their time if my math is right). I'm not really sure if they have xmas break over there.</p>
<p>i remember asking my teacher for the penn rec, i was like "could u do it in the next five min? heh.heh." all he did was comment on how demanding it was in a jokingish way, but he did it anyway, and twas a nice rec</p>
<p>i think your teacher has something up his _.</p>
<p>(sorry, bad atmosphere's gettin to me)</p>
<p>try explaining that it was really unexpected, and that you truly appreciate his help, include some best regards at the end of the letter too. hope that helps</p>
<p>My ideal teachers were already "full" when I asked them and I asked the second week of school! That's like 4 months notice! But seeing as most people asked like the first day, I guess I was a procrastinator. I hate my school. I really do. </p>
<p>5 days is realistically enough time, but not having "breathing room" might have incited the poor guy.</p>
<p>5 days is not so good, especially when he's teaching in china. even if he already had the letter written, it sounds like he's going to need to put in a lot of work for penn's formatting. </p>
<p>my school requires us to ask a month ahead of time...</p>
<p>Yeah, 5 days to write a recommendation during a busy Christmas break sounds a bit rushed. I'd say at least two to three weeks.</p>