Communicating with LOR professors only through emails

[Emily Eyefinger]

Hi, could any of you help me out please?

I'm in another country right now and can't personally come into the professors' office to have a chat with about the schools and letters. So what I will probably have to do is just send them an email saying, "Hi, do you remember me? I'm planning to apply for this and that school and want to ask you to be my LOR person...yay."

Has anyone here done their LOR this way(only via email respondences)? How should I make the most out of the medium I have as to be as polite as possible?

I'm also confused about the address the letters would have to be sent to. A guy I asked about this said his professors handed him the sealed letters so that he could send them with the application to each school himself. Is this the way things are usually done? Shouldn't the professors send the letter to the institutions directly? If the professors are to send the letters to me by a snailmail, they would have to pay for the international shipping fee and I would certainly not want that as it would make me feel even worse about not being able to ask them for the LOR in person.

And when is the approprate time to ask for the letter? Should I contact them after I have clearly come up with a list of schools that I will be applying to? Is asking after the summer vacation too late?

Thank you so much for your help. I've been away from school for some time and am so out of touch with the whole process, the gradcafe is the only place I can get much needed help on my preparation for apps.

[TheFez]

These days most schools prefer, and some schools mandate, electronic submission of letters. In the case of hard-copy letters, it is more customary for the Professor to mail the letter directly to the school - but it's not uncommon for them to give them to the student in a sealed envelope, signed across the flap. This is the way I did it to better manage the process - since I read too many horror stories about missing LORs. But make sure you fill out and sign the waiver form that is common with hard copy letters. Sections of those forms are for the professors to fill out and sign as well, and then include with their letter.