Updating teacher recommendation for RD applications in Common Application

Hi there,

My teachers have already submitted recommendations for my early applications in the Common Application, but expressed interest in updating the letter for regular decision to revise the wording a little bit. When I pull open the colleges on my list, the teacher recommendation shows up as “submitted”, but my application has not been turned in yet. Are they able to upload a new letter sometime between now and January or does the recommendation get sent to colleges before the application is submitted?

Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!

I have a recommender account because I’m my daughter’s homeschool counselor. I remember reading that the submissions are not actually delivered to the schools until the student submits his or her application, though I can’t find that message in my account now. I do see where it says that my submissions are sent to all schools to which the student submits an application, so I think this is correct.

Regarding changing their submissions though, no, they can’t do that. It’s pretty clear on the website that once a recommender submits a form then they can’t go back and change it. You can confirm this yourself even if you don’t have a Common App recommender account if you can find your way by Google to the Recommender Solutions Center and look at some of the FAQs. There’s one called “What if I made a mistake on a form? How do I have that corrected?” that addresses this.

One solution would be something that CommonApp recommends when a teacher has submitted a letter that was specifically addressed to a particular school by mistake and doesn’t want it sent to all other schools. If you haven’t yet submitted your application to a school, then you could un-assign the teacher from that school and the teacher could mail their letter. The teacher may need to download and print an additional evaluation form to accompany the letter. I’d recommend that they include your Common App ID number in any correspondence so that when they do send it then the school can match it to your file. If you go this route then you might want to give your teachers pre-addressed, stamped envelopes for the schools. Then you have to deal with wondering whether the letter arrives on time and is matched to your file. Or you could ask if the school accepts letters by email. I imagine that you would track this in the specific school’s portal that usually reflects whether required materials have been received. Unfortunately, though, there’s not an easy way to just switch it with a new submission. It may not be worth the trouble if it’s just a matter of updating some wording.

I will add that if you want to confirm all of this with Common App then you should submit a question through their Contact page. They are very busy right now but I submitted a question today and received a response within 20 minutes.

Good luck to you!

Okay great, thank you so much for the detailed response! This really helps to clear up my confusion.