common application letter of recommendation

[dirty ethel rackham]

I have a question ...

My son has two non-teachers who have agreed to do letters of recommendation. However, the common app only seems to want teachers. Can he invite them? How does he do that?

[Amy in NH]

Did you see this list of questions/answers? I think you might find the answer there.

[Brenda in MA]

Ellen,

 

Unless things have changed with the Common App in the last couple of years, your son can invite whoever he wants to write his recommendations as long as the college he is applying to is OK with them. He would just submit their names and email addresses under the teacher recommendations. My son used his scoutmaster, who did the electronic recommendation, and it went through fine.

 

You might have to just let the people writing the recommendations know that they should describe how they know your son in the letter, and that some of the categories on the form might not apply to them.

 

Also suggest to them to write up their letter on their PC in word processing software and save it. When they're done, then just copy and paste it into the Common App form. The Common App form only stays "open" for a fixed amount of time, and if you start a letter while in the online form and then walk away for awhile, you're bound to loose what you've written.

 

Best wishes,

Brenda

[dirty ethel rackham]

Thanks for the info. I'll pass it on to my son. On the section where they invite the recommender, they have to specify if it is a teacher or a counselor. I know that I am the counselor, but he was concerned that it said "teacher."

[memphispeg]

Amy - Thanks so much for the link.

[mooooom]

we didn't know if our references had email addies, and it seemed kind of personal to ask, I was also concerned that I would be misrepresenting them as teachers if we did it that way. I called several schools to ask and this is what we came up with:

 

We assigned myself and my husband - with different email addies as the teachers and then selected "other" for courses taught. It won't matter if you are also the counselor and have already used your email addy. Then when you get emails from the Common Ap, just opt out of doing them online.

 

Also, we wrote up a really short blurb, in the "is there anything else you need to tell us" section that said because we were homeschoolers and hadn't had other teachers except online ones that we didn't feel could give accurate references, they would be coming from.... and ... instead" and uploaded it.

 

I felt we were covered this way and the schools we asked said they never looked at the common app to see were the references would come from, and they said never, they just wait for some to show up. And there is no way to complete the common app w/o those spots filled in.

 

I went crazy trying to figure this out. Please pm me if you have any other questions about doing this.

 

Hallie