<p>I know it’s a professor’s duty to write Letters of recommendation for students, however it seems kind of ridiculous to see that duty exponentiated with the proliferation of school-specific recommendation forms. How can you ask a professor to fill out 5-10 unique forms for all the schools you’re applying to when every other student is doing the same?</p>
<p>yeah one of my professors wanted me to use the university letter service so she only had to write one, but nope they all have unique forms and require online submission now.</p>
<p>felt pretty awful asking her to do 10.</p>
<p>The reason schools have unique forms is that the letter service fits all model actually does a disservice to applicants. They are written with no context about the program being applied to and end up being generic, boring statements. Custom letters are harder to get and harder to write, but they are far more effective. Schools using unique forms are trying to stimulate that higher quality information.</p>
<p>Back in 1983 when I applied to grad school each institution had its own forms. This practice is not new.</p>