Interfolio for LOR???

[clamato]

Ok, so I'm appliyng to five masters programs this year.

I asked for recommendations from my three recommenders, all of whom are great and know me well. Two agreed with no problems. But the third one has always been a bit flakey -- she's an academic chair, so she's busy -- and she requested that I sign up for Interfolio so she can submit her recommendation that way.

Does anyone have any experience with Interfolio or similar services? Can acceptance committees tell if something has been submitted via Interfolio? Would it reflect negatively on me or my application?

The reason I ask these questions is because four of the five schools to which I'm applying have their own online submission systems for recommenders. A few of these online forms have short, additional questions about the applicant to be answered by the recommender, like, "Please compare the applicant's academic ability with that of other students..." for which they can select that the applicant was in the "Top 2%" or "Top 5%" or "Top 20%" of students taught by them, etc. With Interfolio, my recommender won't be able to answer these short questions.

In any case, it's sort of painful because the service costs $20 a year, and electronic submission costs $6 per school. And my fifth school is old school, and requires a physical letter to be mailed physically; printed on stationary, sealed, and signed by the recommender across the seal. That's not going to happen with Interfolio.

So, how do I broach these concerns with my recommender, if at all?

Edited November 19, 2012 by clamato

[losemygrip]

You say, "I'm really sorry to bother you, but the schools to which I'm applying don't use Interfolio. They have their own specific online forms and requirements. Let me know if there's any issue with that--I think you can just copy and paste the text portion." And if possible, "Professors A and B said it only took them about five minutes for each application."