<p>Are your courses on a BLOCK SCHEDULE ?</p>
<p>What does that mean?</p>
<p>Also each teacher recommendation form says you may waive your right to see your recommendations during the application process if you sign below. Is signing equivalent to claiming you have not seen them?</p>
<p>Block schedule–usually 4x4 (four classes each semester) or “accelerated” A/B schedule with A days having certain classes and B days having certain classes. I guess trimester schools would fall here as well.</p>
<p>As opposed to the “traditional” schedule which would be six, seven or eight classes each day, all year.</p>
<p>I think the waiving of the right to see your recommendations is supposed to make the teacher feel more comfortable writing an honest critique. If you don’t check the box, you could ask the college to see the recommendations that were sent in the event you were not admitted. I don’t know that checking the box would preclude you asking the teacher to see what they wrote? Someone else will have to field this one.</p>
<p>Pyewacket, there are several different types of block scheduling, all are different than the traditional one set of courses taken over an entire year. A student may take classes like most colleges -MWF and TTh, or they might have 8-9 classes taught over 7 periods in a day where they rotate some classes through the week. But if they are asking on the app, probably what they are looking for are schools where the students take one set (usually 4 courses) of courses in the fall, then an entirely different set in the spring. This pattern creates difficulties with AP testing and foreign languages in particular. It also can mean a student could have 4 years of math, but be finished with math by spring of the junior year, for example. </p>
<p>And I would take signing the waiver to infer that you have not actively tried to see your recs, and have not seen them prior to them being sent. If the teacher waves them in front of the student’s face, I would suggest the child not read them. Aren’t you an overseas parent Pyewacket? I know some kids have had trouble getting “American style” recs written for them, so some of the advice about not reading the recs may not apply.</p>
<p>Signing means you don’t have the right to ask the school to show them to you, so the teacher knows that if they don’t want you to see it, you can’t.</p>
<p>That doesn’t preclude the teacher from choosing to show it to you. But I wouldn’t ask; if they want to show it to you, they can offer.</p>
<p>Garland is correct. Oldest child waived the right. One teacher gave a packet with several reqs in sealed envelopes with his signature across the seals for inclusion in admission packet. He also included a copy for her!</p>
<p>So would you all agree that “waiving the right” is to make the recommending teacher feel OK about being honest but that it makes no difference to the adcom people whether you sign or not?</p>
<p>pyewacket, my understanding is that practically speaking the applicant doesn’t really have much choice but to waive the right to see his/her recommendations. If s/he doesn’t do so, the s/he’s guilty by implication of influencing the content in someway. I’ve never heard of anyone NOT signing and I think it could make a difference to the adcom.</p>
<p>My son had four recommendations, two academic (actually three because one was shared by two teachers who changed jobs midstream) and two for his EC’s. The EC recommenders both gave him a copy, but none of the teachers did.</p>
<p>I think it means a great deal. Not signing it is like waving a flag that says “this recommender might feeled constrained to say nice things he/she doesn’t mean”.</p>