How many recommendation letters from one college professor

[Anonymous]

I don’t work in a school, but am surprised professors/departments/schools done have admins to handle this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At my university there was a service provided by a third party where we could ask the prof to upload the rec letter and then the service would send it out as requested. The idea is to keep the recommendation confidential from the student. I cannot remember what it was called but maybe your child’s school uses it.

Thank you. That's helpful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have your DS see whether the campus career services office can keep a rec letter on file and then upload it / send it out by email on his behalf if he gives them the contacts. That would not be an unheard-of service.

I personally can handle about half a dozen rec letters for an individual student before all the upload pings from the automated systems start to clutter my email and my schedule to the point of confusion (because there are plenty of people every day who need various things on various deadlines). If your DS needs much more than that, have him talk with the professors first. They themselves may have a better solution, like insisting on sending references by email, making one list, and doing a big BCC. (Recalcitrant faculty members can actually get concessions like this out of organizations, believe it or not.)

Failing that, at least tell DS to batch everything as close together as possible and give his recommenders a *complete, unchangeable list* of exactly what needs to be sent where, with everything organized in the same categories (e.g. destination, deadline, URL, contact). Messy student checklists and "oh, i forgot to add this one thing" emails slow us down when we really do want to help!

--College prof

Thank you. Very helpful!

[Anonymous]

I would also 3 or 4 professors if at all possible. It cuts down on the annoyance and protects the kid from a bad or generic letter from any 1 professor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would also 3 or 4 professors if at all possible. It cuts down on the annoyance and protects the kid from a bad or generic letter from any 1 professor

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t work in a school, but am surprised professors/departments/schools done have admins to handle this.

Trust me, we don't. Our professional staff colleagues, when their positions are filled (which is increasingly rare these days), are most often our partners in things that require specialized expertise. We need them desperately and treasure them highly. They don't usually have much time left over for clerical things, alas, even when they are willing to pitch in, and we don't have the budget to hire separately for that responsibility set. I wish we did. Instead we kind of all scramble to process everything as quickly as we can, together.

--College prof

[Anonymous]

So many 'problems' in our relationships can be resolved by explaining the situation we're in to the person we're afraid of disappointing and then asking questions.

"Professor, I need to apply to quite a few internships in order to hope to get one. Would it be a burden to ask you to send your letter to 20 different places? What could I do to make it easier for you to do this for me?"