Letters of Recommendation - How Many Copies?

[Shelly in VA]

Ds is applying to colleges this fall, and he has asked a few people to write letters of recommendation for him. My question is for how many copies should he ask? I am guessing he will apply to ~5 schools, and certainly he could always ask for another copy if he needed it, but it seems more respectful of the letter writers' time to ask for them all at once. We just did this 2 years ago with my oldest daughter... you would think I could remember...

 

Thank you!

 

 

[regentrude]

Sine the recommender should send the letter directly to the school, he needs to tell the recommender to which schools he is applying. The number of letters will be the number of schools.

If the schools use the Common Application, the recommender will only submit one, non-school specific letter.

[In The Great White North]

 

 

 the recommender should send the letter directly to the school,

 

 

This.  Or to the Common App, Or to the Congressmen.  Or to the Scholarship application.  The letters of recommendation do not go through the applicant. 

[Kareni]

I agree with what previous posters have said.  When my daughter applied to college, the two people who wrote academic letters of recommendation sent their letters directly to the colleges; one used the Common App website, the other mailed the letters directly to the colleges.  (In the latter case, we provided stamped addressed envelopes. 

 

My daughter worked for three summers in varying capacities at a local organic farm that was staffed by low income and at risk youth.  Her supervisor wrote a letter of recommendation that addressed my daughter's non-academic strengths.  He provided my daughter with a dozen originals. I included a copy of his letter in the application materials (transcript, course descriptions, my letter of recommendation, reading lists, homeschool profile, etc.) that I submitted to each college.

 

Regards,

Kareni