How Are the Letters of Recommendation Sent Online by Academics?

[vooby]

Hello everyone. I am going to apply to several master's programs in the USA and the UK. I read all admission process details but there is only one point that I didn't completely understand.

 

I talked to 2 of my academics in my former university and they both agreed to write a letter of recommendation for me. But my professors are very old (one is 63 and other is 69 years old). If the sending process of the letters of recommendation via internet is a very time-consuming and a difficult process for each letter to send to each university, then I suspect if my professors will and can spend so much time with sending a letter to each university. I just thought that sending the letters to each university by academics may take hours (or is it so? This is what I wonder).

 

How are these letters of recommendation sent by academics? Are the letters just sent to an email addresss by an academic who has an official @edu email? Or (as I fear) are the letters uploaded to universities' online application websites by academics through a time-consuming process? Thanks in advance for all your help!

[.letmeinplz//]

Most of mine were links that the recommender would follow. Once they logged into the system they would upload their letter and sometimes have a survey to fill out. It doesn't take a long time, one of my recommenders sat down and did them all in one day.

[vooby]

Most of mine were links that the recommender would follow. Once they logged into the system they would upload their letter and sometimes have a survey to fill out. It doesn't take a long time, one of my recommenders sat down and did them all in one day.

That is good news! Thank you for the help. And by saying "my recommenders did them all in one day", you don't mean "the whole day", do you?

[TakeruK]

Writing the letter might take 1-2 hours. Changing the school name and uploading them seems to take about 5 minutes. I know this because some of the schools email you when they receive a LOR and on the day my prof decided to send them, I got emails spaced about 5 minutes apart from each school saying they received the letters.

 

Also, don't underestimate your professors! 60s are not that old and the Internet has been around for 20+ years now.

[.letmeinplz//]

That is good news! Thank you for the help. And by saying "my recommenders did them all in one day", you don't mean "the whole day", do you?

No, I applied to 8 schools (some use the same application programs) and I got an email from one who said he was starting and less than an hour later he was done except for one (the LOR request email never reached his email box so I had to get the school to resend it).

 

Let your recommenders know what schools you are applying to beforehand so they can get their letters ready (changing the names of the school/program per each letter). Once they get all the requests it seemed like a quick process to do each school.

 

Also remember professors do these letters all the time, it comes with the territory. They probably have a system for submitting them (obviously one of my recommenders system of recommending was to sit down and get the student out of the way so he stops sending reminders ).

Edited February 24, 2015 by <ian>

[victorydance]

If you are really curious about the process you can do it to yourself. Basically just put your own email in the field and it will email you a prompt and you can see the form and everything that the prof has to fill out. Then just delete that recommender after on the application website. 

[vooby]

Thank you very much for all advice and help.

 

I didn't know that my recommenders should edit each letter for each school name. I thought that my recommenders may write one letter without reference to any particular university and this way they can use the same letter for all universities. But since I don't know what they are going to write, it may be necessary to edit the letter for each university name as you said.

Edited February 24, 2015 by vooby

[TakeruK]

Thank you very much for all advice and help.

 

I didn't know that my recommenders should edit each letter for each school name. I thought that my recommenders may write one letter without reference to any particular university and this way they can use the same letter for all universities. But since I don't know what they are going to write, it may be necessary to edit the letter for each university name as you said.

 

Some profs write letters without mentioning the school name but most of them just mention it once at the top of the letter so it's easy for them to change. When I was first applying for grad school I had no idea how this worked so I was telling my professors that I won't apply to a lot of schools so that they won't have to write a bazillion letters and they laughed and told me that they just change the name so applying to 1 school or 10 schools made almost no difference to them.

[.letmeinplz//]

As TakeruK said, the names are mostly just in the Dear X University Admissions Committee or something to that effect. The letter is more about their experience with you and I think the committee will be more focused on that rather than a few shout outs to their university in the body of the letter.

 

Though I hope my recommender who got his PhD at one of the universities I am applying to made it a little more personal for that specific one. Though I assume the committees will do some background research into each recommender and see it anyway. Not sure it would even matter.

[vooby]

I really thank all of you for the help Good luck!