Recommenders & FERPA

This process should take approximately 10 – 25  minutes.

Items marked with a red asterisk * are required. Students are not required to complete items that do not have the red asterisk.

Introduction

In this section, you will:

Preview

This is an example of the Recommenders & FERPA  page of Common App.

Your school might have specific procedure for inviting recommenders. Ask your high school counselor if your school has a special procedure for requesting letters of recommendation.

Videos

In this video, we discuss the FERPA waiver. FERPA is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. This FERPA form must be completed before you can access the Letters of Recommendation section of Common App. The purpose of this video is to explain the purpose of the FERPA Release and your options in completing this form. This video should take approximately 3 minutes.

Completing the FERPA Waiver in Common App

In this video, we discuss the Letters of Recommendation section of Common App. Different high schools have different procedures for sending letters of recommendation to colleges. The purpose of this video is to help you learn if a college requires letters of recommendation, how many to send, and which teachers to ask. Finally, we provide tips for how to ask your teacher for letters of recommendation. This video should take approximately 5 minutes.

Completing the Recommenders Section in Common App

Tips & Reminders

  • If you “waive your right to review all recommendations and supporting documents,” it means that your teacher’s letter of recommendation will remain a private letter of communication to the college. You will not know what the recommender said about you.
  • Although it is ultimately your decision, many professional counselors suggest that students waive their right to review recommendations and supporting documents.
  • Some colleges do not require or accept letters of recommendation from teachers. To find out if a college requires or accepts letters of recommendation, go to the My Colleges tab of Common App, click on the college name on the left, and scroll down the page to find Recommendations.
  • Different high schools use different electronic platforms to submit letters of recommendation to the colleges. Your high school might not use Common App to send recommendations to colleges. Ask your high school counselor how your school handles letters of recommendation.
  • Your school might have specific procedures for inviting recommenders. Ask your high school counselor if your school has a special procedure for requesting letters of recommendation.
  • Sometimes teachers or school counselors will ask students to create a “brag sheet,” which is a document with information about the student that the teacher or counselor can use to write a letter of recommendation. Learn about the type of information a teacher or counselor might find useful with these guides from Johns Hopkins University
  • The Recommenders section of Common App allows you to invite an Advisor. An “Advisor” is a person with whom you can share your application to get their feedback. It can be a parent, a friend, a community based organization, or a college counselor. You are not required to invite an Advisor. If you do invite an Advisor, that person will be able to see your application but will not be able to make any edits or changes to it. Colleges cannot see the names of any advisors, and advisors are not known to each other or to the school counselor.

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AXS Companion Copyright © 2022 by IECA & Oregon State University Ecampus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.