LOR Transmission Forum

[patriot888]

All,

When mailing applications, how do you deal with the LORs? If you have 100 applications, are you really going to have your recommenders prepare 100 LORS?

Can the recommenders simply e-mail me a signed recommendation and I can just print and include it in each of my 100 applications?

Thank you.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Find out if your school has a system for dealing with this. At mine, profs gave the letter in electronic form to their faculty assistant, and you gave the faculty assistant a word file of the names/addresses where you were applying, and the faculty assistant did the mail merge and generated all the letters. Unless you go to a school that has the obnoxious practice of "approving" who can apply for clerkships, and it hasn't approved you, I would imagine your school has some kind of system for generating letters.

But if not, yeah, your recommenders have to prepare 100 letters. If there isn't any system in place, ask your recommenders what they want to do before asking directly for the letter - some profs take the confidentiality of letters seriously, some don't care. (One prof sent me a copy of his without me even asking.) But you're not the first person to have to deal with this.

[patriot888]

Find out if your school has a system for dealing with this. At mine, profs gave the letter in electronic form to their faculty assistant, and you gave the faculty assistant a word file of the names/addresses where you were applying, and the faculty assistant did the mail merge and generated all the letters. Unless you go to a school that has the obnoxious practice of "approving" who can apply for clerkships, and it hasn't approved you, I would imagine your school has some kind of system for generating letters.

But if not, yeah, your recommenders have to prepare 100 letters. If there isn't any system in place, ask your recommenders what they want to do before asking directly for the letter - some profs take the confidentiality of letters seriously, some don't care. (One prof sent me a copy of his without me even asking.) But you're not the first person to have to deal with this.

My situation: the professor (limited resources (adjunct)) gave me the letter. He instructed me to simply enclose the letter in my application materials. In other words, the reader of the letter will know that I read/have the letter. My question: will the reader take it less seriously?

My school does not have a system. Even if my school had a system, my professor has limited resources (100 signed envelopes is a lot of work and supplies). I was thinking of sealing them in my own personal envelopes . . . making it look more legitimate?

[bruinfan10]

Unless you go to a school that has the obnoxious practice of "approving" who can apply for clerkships, and it hasn't approved you, I would imagine your school has some kind of system for generating letters.

Some schools require you to get "approved?" I'd never heard of that, that's insane.

My school does not have a system. Even if my school had a system, my professor has limited resources (100 signed envelopes is a lot of work and supplies). I was thinking of sealing them in my own personal envelopes . . . making it look more legitimate?

My school would have an OCP person stuff the letters from my recommenders into the same big envelope I gave them containing all the rest of my materials. I don't think judges would find it odd that the letters are included in the same packet as your cover letter, resume, etc.

It is a little odd that you don't have someone who will mail merge the judges' names/addresses for you, but then again, I imagine alumni applicants who use letters from bosses at work don't have that luxury, so judges might not find it odd that you're using photocopies of one generic letter. I wouldn't stress.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Unless you go to a school that has the obnoxious practice of "approving" who can apply for clerkships, and it hasn't approved you, I would imagine your school has some kind of system for generating letters.

Some schools require you to get "approved?" I'd never heard of that, that's insane.

I can't verify, but someone here posted that their school (a TT or TTT, I think) had a clerkship committee that vetted applicants. If they didn't approve you, the school wouldn't assist in your application in any way. Which I agree is totally insane.

[patriot888]

Unless you go to a school that has the obnoxious practice of "approving" who can apply for clerkships, and it hasn't approved you, I would imagine your school has some kind of system for generating letters.

Some schools require you to get "approved?" I'd never heard of that, that's insane.

My school does not have a system. Even if my school had a system, my professor has limited resources (100 signed envelopes is a lot of work and supplies). I was thinking of sealing them in my own personal envelopes . . . making it look more legitimate?

My school would have an OCP person stuff the letters from my recommenders into the same big envelope I gave them containing all the rest of my materials. I don't think judges would find it odd that the letters are included in the same packet as your cover letter, resume, etc.

It is a little odd that you don't have someone who will mail merge the judges' names/addresses for you, but then again, I imagine alumni applicants who use letters from bosses at work don't have that luxury, so judges might not find it odd that you're using photocopies of one generic letter. I wouldn't stress.

Yeah. I am not an alumni applicant.

When you say "mail merge the judge's name/addresses for you," do you mean "mail merge them on to each letter? The photocopies of the generic (to whom this may concern) letter does not contain the judge's name/address.

[bruinfan10]

Yeah. I am not an alumni applicant. When you say "mail merge the judge's name/addresses for you," do you mean "mail merge them on to each letter? The photocopies of the generic (to whom this may concern) letter does not contain the judge's name/address.

I know you're not an alum - I'm saying that because judges likely get generic "to whom it may concern" rec letters from alum applicants, your similar use of that format may not strike them as odd. And yes, as Nony said, normally schools have systems in place to address each rec letter personally to a judge (even if you're applying to 100+ judges). From what you've said though, you don't have any alternatives to photocopying the generic letter, so I'd try not to worry about it.