I asked two of my teachers to mail in recommendation letters (my school is strange and prefers to do it offline), but I just found out that the Common Application has a standard FORM, instead of a letter, which I was supposed to give to teachers to fill out. Will this be a huge problem?
I talked to Northwestern University on the phone, and they told me that it’s acceptable to have a letter and not a form mailed, but I don’t know how other schools feel about it. I’ll email a few teachers and ask them to fill out the form online, but this is very last-minute for them, and I’m sure that they are enjoying their holiday and working on other people’s recommendation letters/forms/grading homework.
No worries. The form is there so the student can be evaluated on various characteristics, such as performance in the classroom. Take a look at the link below, or Google “teacher form Common App” if it doesn’t work. The link is a paper version of the form from a previous years. I believe it is still mostly the same. Notice that at the bottom, there is space for the teacher to include personal comments about the student. My teachers just attached a letter for this section (although they did it electronically). Therefore, for your teachers filling out the form would just be like mailing in a standard recommendation letter, except there are also a few other check boxes that they need to fill out.