Hi, I am extremely confused on how letters of recommendations work on common app. I have asked two different counselors in my school and they each told me something different. On Common App under "My Colleges", when you click an individual school it will ask to invite recommenders. Will that letter be for all the schools on my common app account or will it just be for that Individual school? Also what does "would you like your teacher to complete an evaluation for you" mean?
Teacher evaluation - what is better known as a standard letter of recommendation from your teacher that talks about how you are as a student (academic abilities, attitude in class, etc.). These do not need to be specifically written for each school you're applying to, rather your teacher can use the same one for every school you ask them to recommend you for. When you invite your teacher, Common App will send them a link to upload their letter of recommendation into Common App.
Ultimately, your counselors or teachers will submit the exactl same letter/report for every school you apply to. Once your recommender submits your recommendation into the Common App system, it's sent to all the colleges you've added to your "My Colleges". When I invited my counselor for one school, it automatically assigned them to the other schools in the "My College" section. The best policy is to double check if your recommenders are assigned for each individual school, as you can manually add them if necessary.
"Important note: The Common App for recommenders is a one-and-done process. That means that once you submit a form, it’s sent to all the colleges you’re assigned to. That’s why it’s important not to customize your forms for a specific institution. "
This ^ quote is from a Common App article about how they advise counselors and teachers to write and submit their letters (this quote is from the "Submit Forms" sections towards the bottom of the page)
Here's the link: https://www.commonapp.org/counselors-and-recommenders/recommender-guide
Hope this helps! Let me know if you need more clarification.
thank you!!
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So far, what I've noticed is my letters of rec have appeared for 2 of the colleges I'm applying to but not the other 3 on the common app... I will come back to this question soon.