Getting your LOR uploaded before you submit for the school

[samman1994]

Hello everyone,

So thought I would just share some basic information that I have collected recently on LORs, and uploading them. From all the schools I've seen for grad programs, almost all of them have a deadline between December 1-5th. Now you may be planning to start/submit your application a week or two in advance, however, the school contacts the faculty members after you input their information. Meaning, if you start your application and submit it two weeks before the deadline, that gives your LOR writers only 2 weeks to write it (if they haven't already) and to upload it. This deadline is approaching finals week for some school, and final projects, meaning professors will be very busy (and thus annoyed if they suddenly find out they have to write and submit your LOR in a week, and you do not want an annoyed professor writing your letter).

For many schools, you can actually start your application, input the LOR writers information, and have them upload it to your application even before you finish your application for submission. So that means you can start your application right now, and fill out the sections you have (including the LOR writers), and the school will send your writer an email right now. That gives your LOR writer a little under 2 months to write and submit your letter. This gives them plenty of time, and decreases your chance of them sending a letter late. Now not all schools do this (e.g. Iowa State) and some schools have you send the writer a link for them to upload their LOR (e.g Harvard). But from what I've seen, most of the schools will send your writer an email as soon as you input the information (even if you don't finish the application right then and there). In fact, most schools will even inform you when the letter has been uploaded and by who (so if your faculty member has forgotten, you know who to email to remind them). 

Tl'dr Start your applications now, and input your LOR writers information now (or as early as possible). This way you avoid rushed/annoyed faculty members writing it, and potentially having missing letters when you apply. 

Edited September 23, 2017 by samman1994

[fuzzylogician]

36 minutes ago, samman1994 said:

Tl'dr Start your applications now, and input your LOR writers information now (or as early as possible). This way you avoid rushed/annoyed faculty members writing it, and potentially having missing letters when you apply. 

Yes, though keep in mind: 

1. Some applications only send the prompts after you submit. 
2. Your professors may not plan to submit your letters this long in advance; while it's considerate of you to give them the extra time, take into account that the prompt might get lost in a sea of more recent emails in their inbox. So, check in with them closer to the application deadline to make sure that they still have the prompt, and offer to resend it if they need you to (most applications allow you to do that even after you submit).

[cowgirlsdontcry]

All you need to do is make sure your recommenders have everything they need now, such as your WS, your SOP and if they ask for it, an unofficial transcript. Then when they receive the email from the applicant school, all they have to do is fill in the appropriate information on the LOR already created and submit it. But you need to stay on top of it all. Tell your recommenders when you have finalized each application so they can be watching for the email to arrive.

I can tell you that grad schools lose things. I had my GRE scores sent in October last year and I had a ginormous headache over making sure those scores got into my file, even to one university having set up two files for me. 

[samman1994]

Well that's exactly my point. If you do all this early (as in now), that gives plenty of time for them to write it, for you to remind them, to resubmit if the school loses it etc. Leaving all these potential problems to the last 2-3 weeks puts pressure on everyone, so this is why I think it's best to do it as early as possible (even if it gets lost in the sea of emails right now). Personally, I didn't know I could do this (again not all schools as I stated), so I thought I'd inform people not only you can, but its highly recommended to do so. 

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

One of the things that both of my confirmed writers have asked for (still waiting on the third to confirm) is information about the programs and what research I plan to conduct at each school. I created a Google Doc with each school, the name of the degree (I'm switching from anth to comm and degree names range from "Communications PhD" to "PhD in Emerging Media Studies"), the deadline for each app (also arranged the schools by deadline), a paragraph about the program, a list of the relevant faculty/what they do/how I see their work connecting to my own, and my current communication level with them (I've had phone calls with PoIs at 3 programs with a 4th scheduled and a fairly lengthy email exchange with a 5th, but have yet to have really in-depth conversations with the other programs so I felt it was important to include this). Not only was this information requested by my writers, it helped me succinctly state what I like about each program and locate holes in my research of the schools. This actually helped me eliminate 1 program today and get myself down to a pretty comfortable number of applications.

I also sent the writers the excerpt of my SoP draft that talks about previous research and how it connects to what I want to do in a doctoral program since they asked for more concrete details regarding my future research project. I plan to input their contact info for all apps at the end of this month since one of my writers can't submit anything after Dec 10th and one of the schools is more likely to award research fellowships to early applicants.

[fuzzylogician]

31 minutes ago, samman1994 said:

so I thought I'd inform people not only you can, but its highly recommended to do so. 

Yeah, see, I don't know that I'd go this far. Ask your writers what they prefer; don't assume you know and decide for them. There's nothing stopping them from composing the letter completely independently of having the prompt. All they need is your documents (transcript, CV, SOP, whatever they asked for). They may or may not want the prompt in their inbox three months early. And they may very well prefer if you send them all in one go than one at a time plus an email telling them to expect the prompt. 

[samman1994]

8 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

Yeah, see, I don't know that I'd go this far. Ask your writers what they prefer. There's nothing stopping them from composing the letter completely independently of having the prompt. They may or may not want it in their inbox two months early. 

I see. I personally sat down with each of my LOR writers, updated them as to the schools I picked, my status, and my plan in applying to the school. All of them preferred the idea of having it sent early so they can submit it now (or in the following month) instead of near the end of school. So I just assumed everyone would rather have it early than before, but I understand what you mean. 

Although, something that slightly does concern me, none of my writers really even cared where I was applying to, or for what programs. I mean, I sorta gave them a brief outline (wanna do Biochemistry), but nothing in detail. So when you tell me your writers want to know the program and the research you plan to do, I'm thinking, oh wow that's really good, none of my writers seemed to care. Not that I think my LOR aren't going to be good or anything, but seems like your writers are definitely putting much more though and effort into it. 

Edit: Although, it may be because 2 of my writers are synthetic and physical chemists, and I'm applying to a Biochemistry program (they probably don't understand much about the details of my research plans even if I told them, so maybe that's why they didn't ask)

Edited September 23, 2017 by samman1994

[cowgirlsdontcry]

Recommended to do it early? By whom? All any of my recommenders requested from me this early was my WS and SOP. One asked for an unofficial transcript. They prepared the letters ahead of time and when they received the email from the schools, they said it literally took 5 minutes to fill in the necessary information and submit the LOR. There was no stress on them. I had a lot of stress. You are creating unnecessary stress for yourself now when it's not even stress time. Some universities haven't even opened their applications yet.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

samman, this may be a discrepancy between our areas of interest. I don't know if it's standard for people in your field to request this info from applicants, but this is what my experience has been. The third I'm waiting on was actually a writer for me last year and they send out a survey so you can fill out your academic information, research interests, any personal hurdles you've overcome, etc. It may just be a bi-product of anthropology; anthropologists like to learn about people.  

[CL2018]

What does CV, WS, and SOP mean??

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

CV is curriculum vitae (aka your academic resume)
WS is writing sample
SoP means Statement of Purpose (sometimes called a Personal Statement by some programs)

[CL2018]

16 hours ago, GreenEyedTrombonist said:

CV is curriculum vitae (aka your academic resume)
WS is writing sample
SoP means Statement of Purpose (sometimes called a Personal Statement by some programs)

Thank you!!!

[avflinsch]

One thing to remember is that the deadline is for things that you have control over. The schools usually don't start looking at everything until a few weeks later, they know that sometimes that it takes a while for things like letters, test scores and transcripts to arrive.

It is also not unheard of for you to be conditionally admitted upon receipt of some final documentation. That is what happened to my daughter, she was invited to apply to a specific program that she had not considered late (early August), submitted everything she could, and had 2 of the 3 required letters uploaded. She was notified about the conditional admit a few days before classes started and the department registered her for courses, but she was not officially admitted until the final letter came in a month later.

In other words - get everything in that you have some control over CV/Statement/Writing Samples, and make sure that you have requested things like transcripts/test sores/letters from wherever they need to be requested from.

 

 

[Casual_Bongos]

Getting the LORs uploaded can be a real pain. People are busy and you don't want to be a nag . . . but you also need to get things in before your deadline.

What I did was I had people I wanted letters from write those letters for me before I left their departments/companies. That way I was still fresh in their minds, I wasn't hitting them when they were at their busiest, and I could even sit down with them and go over what I needed them to address in those letters. It also allowed me to collect more than the recommended 3 letters so I could choose which ones I thought would help me out the most.

I then kept those letters with me until I was ready to apply for grad school (I took a break between undergrad and grad and worked in the field for a few years.)

When I was ready to apply to grad school I got back in touch with those people, sent them text and pdfs of the letters they'd already written for me and said "Is it okay for me to use these now?" All of them were totally fine with it because they didn't have to do anything except copy and paste or upload what I'd just sent them into the school's webpage. All three of them had the letters up within 48 hours of the school sending them the links.

Easy peasy.

 

Edited October 9, 2017 by Casual_Bongos

[samman1994]

I decided to try what you did as well, to make it easier when I apply, and it didn't work out for me.  No one I asked for LOR agreed to write it earlier, they all told me when I decide to apply, just tell them and they'll write it for me then (and this was when I initially decided I was going to apply 2-3+ years later, instead of applying this year which is what I am doing now). Secondly, none of them (the writers) wanted me to see their letters (i.e. waive my right).