CSDCAS Question

[med speechie hopeful]

Hi!

When filling out CSDCAS applications, how do personal statements and letters of recommendations work?  If I want to apply to 5 schools who use CSDCAS, will my professors have to send in 5 different letters of rec each?  Or will they just send in a general letter of recommendation that covers all the schools I'm applying to?  I have the same question for personal statements: will I be able to tailor my personal statement to each school and submit 5 personal statements, or just 1 general personal statement?

Thank you in advance!

[AlwaysaFalcon]

How I handled my letter of intent I did a general outline of what I wanted to say and then tailored it individually to each school depending on what they wanted. I said my interest in speech, a background about me and my goals for grad school and what I liked about the grad program. My professors did a general letter of recommendation for each school. CSDCAS is nice because they can just submitt that once. Hope that helps! I know applying to school is stressful!

[med speechie hopeful]

34 minutes ago, AlwaysaFalcon said:

How I handled my letter of intent I did a general outline of what I wanted to say and then tailored it individually to each school depending on what they wanted. I said my interest in speech, a background about me and my goals for grad school and what I liked about the grad program. My professors did a general letter of recommendation for each school. CSDCAS is nice because they can just submitt that once. Hope that helps! I know applying to school is stressful!

Yeah, so just to clarify, when you say they can just submit the letters of rec once, do you mean one professor can just submit one letter of rec and that one general letter will go to all the schools you apply to?  Or do they need to submit letters of rec for each school I apply to on CSDCAS?  Thank you for the info!

[AlwaysaFalcon]

For the CSDCAS letters each professor I had submitted one letter. So I had 4 people write my letters of recommendation and on CSDCAS I think I applied to 25 schools but they didn't submit it 25 times, just once! For schools not on csdcas I gave my professors a list of those schools and a due date I wanted them to upload the letter by. Most of these applications they could upload electronically and were sent an email explaining the process. I hope that helps!

[Louly]

As AlwaysaFalcon mentioned, each of your references submit one letter of rec on CSDCAS. All your schools will use that one submission. Personal statements or Letter of Intents are submit separately for each college on CSDCAS. I, too, also made a general one that targets the obvious questions (Why you chose this field? Why that particular school, etc.) then later tailored it to that specific school.

A HUGE Tip: Try to submit your stuff at least 3-4 weeks in advanced (including your LOR). It takes FOREVER for CSDCAS to receive it, review it and post it in your file as "completed".  Some schools will specifically say it on their site that if CSDCAS did not completed it by the due date, it's considered as an incomplete application. Every school is different, call CSDCAS to see which one of your schools need everything "completed" by the due date and which schools are ok that CSDCAS received documents but have not put "completed" in your file yet. The earlier you start on your submissions, the better. Don't wait till peak time (Dec-Feb) because my GRE scores took 3.5 weeks to be posted in my CSDCAS application. Even the process of paying it needed time to approve. It was such a hassle! 

[med speechie hopeful]

On 6/12/2017 at 0:10 PM, AlwaysaFalcon said:

For the CSDCAS letters each professor I had submitted one letter. So I had 4 people write my letters of recommendation and on CSDCAS I think I applied to 25 schools but they didn't submit it 25 times, just once! For schools not on csdcas I gave my professors a list of those schools and a due date I wanted them to upload the letter by. Most of these applications they could upload electronically and were sent an email explaining the process. I hope that helps!

This was exactly what I wanted to know.  Thanks so much!

[med speechie hopeful]

On 6/13/2017 at 2:14 AM, Louly said:

As AlwaysaFalcon mentioned, each of your references submit one letter of rec on CSDCAS. All your schools will use that one submission. Personal statements or Letter of Intents are submit separately for each college on CSDCAS. I, too, also made a general one that targets the obvious questions (Why you chose this field? Why that particular school, etc.) then later tailored it to that specific school.

A HUGE Tip: Try to submit your stuff at least 3-4 weeks in advanced (including your LOR). It takes FOREVER for CSDCAS to receive it, review it and post it in your file as "completed".  Some schools will specifically say it on their site that if CSDCAS did not completed it by the due date, it's considered as an incomplete application. Every school is different, call CSDCAS to see which one of your schools need everything "completed" by the due date and which schools are ok that CSDCAS received documents but have not put "completed" in your file yet. The earlier you start on your submissions, the better. Don't wait till peak time (Dec-Feb) because my GRE scores took 3.5 weeks to be posted in my CSDCAS application. Even the process of paying it needed time to approve. It was such a hassle! 

Thank you so much for this advice!

[AlwaysaFalcon]

On 6/20/2017 at 10:06 PM, med speechie hopeful said:

This was exactly what I wanted to know.  Thanks so much!

No problem at all!