Jenny in Florida Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 This is probably a dumb question, but I'm not finding a clear answer anywhere. My son has decided late in the game to go ahead and apply for full-time admission for next fall, rather than staying here for a year and then transferring. One of the colleges in which he's interested has an application deadline of December 1. So, we are scrambling a bit to pull together all of the components. He has chosen two recommenders, one of whom is not an academic-type teacher and who will need specific instructions about how to actually do this. I understand that my son will need to assign recommenders to each application and then invite them to submit through the Common App site. My question, though, is just how much trouble is this process for the teachers? I ask because my son will be applying to eight schools using the Common App, six of which require those recommendations. Will his poor recommenders have to navigate that site and manually submit (copy and paste or upload a file or whatever) in six different places? Or can each teacher upload or save the information once so that my son can then click a checkbox to submit the desired form to specific schools? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MysteryJen Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 The recommender just submits once, just like your counselor letter. And then the student assigns them to a school. Ds1's last recommender submitted two nights ago, said it was super simple and encountered no problems. One out of Three! The other two had to do paper recommendations as they couldn't even log on to the site. So maybe the site has fixed some of the recommender problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathy in Richmond Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Recommenders only have to upload once to the Common App. I am a letter writer this year & just went through this process. Make sure that his recommenders know that the letter might be used for several schools & thus should not be school specific. Once they upload their stuff, your son will be able to see that they're done. Then he simply indicates which letters he wants for which school as he completes each school's application. These FAQ on the CA site helped me with some of the detailed how-to's. Also, if your recommenders aren't comfortable doing everything online, it explains how they can opt out & submit by snail mail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenny in Florida Posted October 31, 2013 Author Share Posted October 31, 2013 Wonderful! Thanks so much, Jen and Kathy. That was what made sense to me, but I wanted to make sure before I had to start giving out instructions to the recommenders. This seems like a lot less work for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.