Interfolio

[PhillyPhan896]

Ok so I'm sure that this question has been posed before, but I can't seem to find an adequate answer. I am getting ready to apply to 10 phd programs for history, and I feel like that is a lot of LORs for my recommenders to upload, even if they use the same letter for all 10 schools. At least one of my recommenders is a very well known historian with a crazy work schedule, so I cant imagine that he would enjoy spending an hour or two uploading the recs (on top of the time he took to write it).

At the same time, it appears that most grad schools explicitly require the LORs to be uploaded online. Does anyone know of a good solution? Is using a dossier service like Interfolio feasible these days?

Thanks!

[kolja00]

Yeah I'd love an answer to this as well. Seems like it would be 20x easier if you could mail forms in.

[runonsentence]

Interfolio is really common for job market applicants, but I'm not sure how widely it's used for the application process, at this point.

I'm not sure that it would necessarily be to your detriment to use it (after all, adcoms would be familiar with the service from their experiences with hiring committees), but then again, I don't know if programs would have an issue with it if they require forms, since those wouldn't be included.

The safest course of action would be to check with at least some (if not all) of your schools, particularly those that ask for extra forms along with your LoRs.

Another option for rather persnickety writers: last year I actually put together a packet for one of my writers so that she could mail in hardcopy letters. This worked best for her because she had a busy schedule and wanted to be able to send out all of my letters in one go (and doing the letters through the online applications, of course, meant that she'd have to wait for me to submit many of my applications because of the way that many systems work). It took about 2-3 hours of administrative work on my end (printing out forms, addressing envelopes, filling in what information I could on the forms, e.g. addresses and the like), but it worked well to resolve my problem.

If you do decide to go that route, you'll just have to check to ensure that programs will accept a hardcopy letter (usually they will). I first checked websites, and then called the other 3 programs out of my 10 that didn't say; all of the grad secretaries I called were really nice and helpful about it.

[ebannen]

I'm applying to English Grad programs, and I'm finding that Interfolio is useless. Most of the programs in the top 20 have their own online uploading instructions emailed to your professor during your app process; all you do it put in their email, the school emails them, they email back their recommendation. I regret spending the money on Interfolio.