D got the blah blah letter, too, and hated it. She recently got one (I can’t remember which school) with pretend coffee stains all over it and hated that one, too.
@crknwk2000 and @Itisatruth Thank you for the info on Macalester. The international flavor and SLAC/urban setting would be terrific for D20, but we are in NY and it’s just so FAR. She will likely put it on the list because other than the distance, it seems terrific, at least on paper.
A housekeeping question - in the new CC version how do we “bookmark”? It was so much easier in the old version.
@ebh87 I’ll bet the coffee stains mailer was from U Chicago. My D18 loved that one, S20 barely glanced at it.
@Dancingmom518 if it helps at all, Macalester is fairly close to the airport (about a 20-minte drive). So it might be easier to get to than some more rural schools at least.
@Nicki20 I hope you guys like Minnesota and have a good visit!
Funny how different kids like different things. It will be interesting to see where they each end up going.
There is a little flag it the upper right corner of the first post. Click on the flag until it turns blue to bookmark the thread. You can unclick until it turns white to eliminate the bookmark.
You can dismiss any of the posts are pinned to the top of a forum. Click on the gear icon next to the first post and choose dismiss. When you refresh the page, that thread will be available chronologically rather than pinned to the top. I LOVE this option.
You can also ignore a certain person but I’m not exactly sure how to do that.
@lkg4answers
Thank you so much!
My friend from grad school is a chemistry professor at Macalester 
I’m glad to hear people liked it!
I played it around a bit and found out how you could “ignore” a person: go to the menu that has “your name, notification, inbox, bookmark, and account option”. Under account option there is an “ignore list” that you could add the person(s) that you want to ignore. HTH
Thanks for the tips! So happy to get rid of those pinned posts! @lkg4answers
For those whose kids have asked teachers for recs, when did they tell the teachers that they needed them by? D just asked me (because one of her teachers asked her when she needed the letter by), and I wasn’t sure what was best to tell her. She will be applying to a few schools early, so am thinking September 1st would be a reasonable date; however, I just didn’t know if I was missing something. Also, what is the process with recs and the Common App? Do the teachers just submit the recs to the Common App?
@AlwaysLearn That is entirely school dependent. At our school once you ask for a rec, the teacher has 2 weeks to upload it to common app. Students aren’t allowed to ask before school starts. I tried contacting guidance because we have a few schools that we wanted to submit early, but guidance isn’t available until sometime in August. We figure we’ll get our part in and when the school gets their stuff in, is fine. There really is nothing we can do about it.
Unless you are actually pulling the trigger Sept 1, that is pretty early to have recs done by. When does school start for you? If it starts earlier then it makes sense, but in our part of the country, we don’t start school until a week or two after that. Teachers are on vacation. If its not critical, I don’t know that I’d bother then until they were back to work. Just a thought.
Seconding @MuggleMom’s response. Schools have their own rules for all of this - whom students can ask, when they can (or must) ask, and how the uploading is handled. Your GC is the one with the answers here, @AlwaysLearn.
I believe that some schools use programs such as Naviance which facilitate teacher uploading of letters.
@MuggleMom @Octagon @HarrietMWelsch
Thanks for your replies. She starts school in mid-August, and she asked teachers at the end of last year (May). They agreed, and she just recently sent them a resume with her GPA, extracurriculars, etc. And then both teachers texted her this week asking “When do you need it by?”
Also at the end of last year, she asked the GC what the process was for recs, and the GC told her something to the effect of “You just ask them (the teachers) to write one for you” and nothing more. It’s a public school of over 4,000 kids, so we’re kind of on our own to figure things out. For example, I know some parents who didn’t know what SAT subject tests were until it came up in our conversation. (BTW am not knocking the GC, who is super nice and has been helpful throughout these last 3 years. The school just doesn’t have the resources it needs to do a very thorough job of preparing this many kids for the college admissions process. I think I’ll see call the GC and see if I can get a little more info re: how the recs are uploaded, etc. Just want to make sure am doing things the right way. )
Our school requires you ask for reccs by end of junior year. All apps must be complete by Nov. 15. Teachers send reccs through Naviance. Not quite sure how it works for rolling admission schools - my d didn’t apply to any of those. She did apply to a lot of schools EA, and everything was done in plenty of time.
@AlwaysLearn I am guessing what the teachers really want is the college’s due date for the application and related materials. I think it would be fine to tell them your daughter is submitting everything by x date (or already has) and then state the college’s due date for whatever “decision” type she is applying for (ED, EA, rolling, honors, etc). At least that is what is on the standard form that my DC have to fill out at their HS.
Finally got S20’s Apush score! He got a 4, which we’re all happy with since he struggled in the class all year. Pretty much in the low 80s all year. I’m not sure why it took so long, but happy to have the results.
About the recommendations - in DS20’s large public school - students are advised to ask the teachers in junior year final quarter. But this is an informal thing. DS20 approached 3 teachers, all of them agreed to give a recommendation but asked him to send more details a bit closer to the deadline (i.e after the school reopen in Sept). Some other teachers apparently took student’s resume/brag-sheet - so it depends on the teachers too (in the same school). School has naviance and GC told us that teachers are pretty good in meeting deadlines as long as they are given good advance notice - most students ask end of junior year and ping them again in Sept.
Also at a public school that doesn’t have restrictions on who you can ask or when you can ask. Most kids ask during the second semester of junior year so teachers have time to write letters over the summer and to write them when their impressions/memories of the student are fresh. Some teachers limit how many letters they will write, others don’t. Many teachers have students fill out a form a list of schools and deadlines, especially any EA/ED deadlines. Some teachers ask for a copy of the LOR packet that is given to the counselor. Most teachers will tell you if they think you are better off asking someone else to write your letter. :neutral: