In the portals of schools where my S23 has applied, I noticed that some schools only want one recommendation. My S has one from a science teacher and one from a history teacher. The history one seems to be the first one they send out and colleges show received. My S wants to major in engineering. GC says Naviance sends one randomly. Does anyone know if this is true about Naviance? How much will this detract from his engineering application? I am kinda bummed about this! Pretty sure the physics teacher has written a strong rec. The history one is probably also good but less relevant. Does this matter very much?
If your son used Common Application to apply to universities, the student chooses which recommendations to send to each college.
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Itâs unfortunate your HS GC is giving such poor advice. This is not the case, the student controls which schools get which LoRs in Naviance. There are many websites and YouTube videos that show the process of assigning a recommender to each school if you google something like ârequesting and assigning LoRs in Navianceâ. If you canât find one, Iâll take a look later today and link to one.
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GC is wrong
Honestly not a big deal. I have a DD who is an architecture major at a college, and when applying her rec letter came from a french teacher. She got into it everywhere she applied. My 23 is applying for engineering, architecture, or forensics science and his rec letter was from his English teacher. He is 8 for 8 so far with 3 outstanding. He has got into his first choice already.
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If the school has requested or recommended that the letter come from a teacher in a stem subject, then I would see if it can be changed. Our school uses Naviance and the GC definitely gets to choose. Thankfully, they explain the year before apps that they will pick the one(s) that are the most detailed, most personal, etc, in situations where they cannot send all. Unfortunately parents still sometimes donât trust the process and demand certain ones are sentâschool usually just moves on and sends the requested one. We never did thatâbut we had gotten the clear info that they pick based on specific details. D21 is a history/humanities kid. She had an English, History and science rec. The science one went everywhere and the history only to places that allowed 3. She did very very well in admissions and I suspect her struggles then rising to the challenge of the very difficult physics class led to a much more detailed helpful rec than the history one where she cruised through the class and was always at the top. Or the physics teacher just writes them better/more detailed.
D23 needed to send just one of her 3 to a merit scholarship program at a school: the counselor told her that theyâd pick the most in depth personal one with specific details that would match to what this leadership-type merit scholarship wants, and again we were mildly surprised which one it was. I am sure there are many other reasons one rec is âbetterâ than anotherâsorry the GC wasnât honest with you and said it was random. You could see if some gentle prodding will help answer why they sent that one.
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Itâs not random, but in any case, the best recommendation is from a teacher who says very positive things about you in a way that sheds light on your best qualities, hopefully qualities the college values too. The recommendation isnât about you knowing the course material. So itâs very possible that your sonâs history teacher wrote the better rec anyway.
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Thanks for this suggestion. I went into Naviance where the LORs are, and both say they were submitted everywhere. There is no latitude for my student to choose or add one to be sent. Maybe itâs the way the school set up their Naviance? The school has also advised students NOT to ask recommenders on the Common app because they will do it from their end.
If colleges require one LoR and allow one optional, is it possible they received both but only list one on the portal? That is what I was figuring until I asked and was told this ârandomâ comment. But maybe both are received and the GC wasnât asked âwhich oneâ to send since an optional one was allowed. Also glad to hear maybe it wonât matter. I donât think any of the school required one form a STEM teacher. I just know that one is going to be excellent and relevant, and it feels like such a long slog to get to this point, those LoRs are hard-earned!
I am not sure both letters would send if only one is required. Here is a video that shows how it works, I donât know if the school has any leeway on how to set this up, but I doubt itâŠand the GC does NOT control this action, the student does.
Hereâs what the screen looks like, where the select their teacher(s), and then choose which colleges each LoR should go to.
Here are Navianceâs directions: https://sites.google.com/berenacademy.org/naviancehelp/letters-of-recommendation?pli=1
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Yeah, I just spent a bit of time trying to find this page they show and looking at the Naviance help page and video. I think ours must be set up differently. There are no actions to take on the LoR page, and the colleges do not show up there. There is no âAdd Requestâ button. I think the college counselors handle all of this from their end. Students are told to alert them when an app is submitted so they can send transcript and LoRs.
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Crazy! Seems like they make it harder for the teachers than it needs to be! Good luck with this, and good luck to your S23.
Yes that is how our school is set up: the counselors have the control and the students dont have the settings seen in video.
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Seems like your high school where the counselor picks what should be the best recommendations when fewer are asked for gives the students an advantage over students at other high schools where the choice of which recommendations is effectively luck of the draw in terms of recommendation quality.
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My kid had almost the exact same situation. The admissions portals donât always have good info, but you can see what the schools downloaded if you go to common app.
Go to the My Colleges tab, pick the school, and go to the Reccomenders and FERPA tab on on the sidebar.
My son got lucky that the 1 letter he preferred was the one that got submitted 1st, but he was able to confirm what the schools downloaded by looking here. If you want, you can address it with any school that has downloaded only the one you donât want. But I agree with others that itâs likely not a big deal.
Here is what it looked like for a school that downloaded 2 vs a school that only downloaded 1. But maybe you already did this, not sure. Perhaps it can help someone else.
Edited to add: I just went and looked at naviance for the first time since he submitted his common app. His GC had originally sent 2 letters to every school, and thatâs how it showed up in Naviance at the time of applying. Now itâs only showing that the 2 letters were sent to some of the schools. Iâm not sure if my son asked her to change it after the fact or what happened. But it definitely changed.
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Our GC does not read the LoRs from teachers, so I donât know which was âbetter.â I was just ideally wanting the science one to be sent since engineering is the intended program.
I got an update that I had been given the wrong info yesterday and in fact any college that allowed two recs was sent both LoRs. Only one school accepted a maximum of one LoR. So I got alarmed about nothing, except that (in my defense) the initial reply I got was not reassuring. Luckily that was not correct. Thanks everyone for chiming in. I learned a few things about Naviance!
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