This article will provide you with an understanding of Teacher Recommendations, covering everything you need to know to help you prepare for Document Sending.
Upload Teacher Recommendations
There are two methods to make Teacher Recommendations show on an individual student’s Document Sending page.
1. Requested by students
Please refer to the student article - Request a recommendation letter.
Once the students send their requests to teachers using the Teacher recommendations tool on their BridgeU platform, you will see the request shown in Document Sending > click into a student’s name > click Add/View Documents to open up the Document overlay > Recommendation Letters section
If the status is showing pending, this means that the teacher has not submitted their teacher recommendation. You can also track the Teacher Recommendation request status for specific teachers in Documents > Recommendation letters tab (see this article).
If the status is showing a timestamp, this means that the teacher has uploaded the PDF letter file and submitted the Teacher Recommendation. For Parchment delivery, you can click the Parchment tab, select the Teacher Recommendation, and then send it out directly (see this article).
If the student is paired with Common App and has Common App applications, please click Common App tab, click into the Teacher Recommendation to have the final review of the form, save the form and send it out. Please refer to this article to learn how to send out a Common App Teacher Recommendation form for your students.
If you have not saved the form, the teacher can still edit the form or re-upload the PDF file. If you have saved the form but haven’t sent out the Teacher Recommendation, the teacher will need to contact you, the school counselor, to provide information/file that the teacher wants to make the change on the already submitted Teacher Recommendation.
2. Manually uploaded by school counselor/advisor
Depending on your school's own policy or workflow, you might want to collect Teacher Recommendation letters on behalf of your students and upload them manually.
Step 1: Once you’ve obtained the Teacher Recommendation letter PDF file, go to the Document Sending page > locate the student and click the student’s name.
Step 2: Click the Add/View Documents green button on the top right corner of the individual student’s Document Sending page.
Step 3: Click the Add Document green button.
Step 4: Select Teacher Recommendation as the Document type, give the document a descriptive name (e.g. teacher’s name version 2) and select the PDF file to upload.
Step 5: You will see the Teacher Recommendation displayed under the Recommendation Letters section.
Step 6 (Parchment): For Parchment delivery, please refer to this Help Centre article to send out the teacher recommendation.
Step 7 (Common App): If the student is paired with Common App and has Common App applications, please go to Common App tab > click into the teacher recommendation > fill out the form on behalf of the teacher > save the form and send out the teacher recommendation. Please also refer to this Help Centre article for more details.
Edit the title of Teacher Recommendations
You can edit the Teacher Recommendation title in the Document overlay on individual students’ Document Sending pages. This can be quite handy for the scenario where there are 2 teacher recommendations from the same teacher for a student. Editing the title of Teacher Recommendations can help to distinguish them. To edit the title of a Teacher Recommendation:
Step 1: Go to Document Sending > locate the student and click the student name
Step 2: On the student’s Document Sending page, click Add/View Documents green button on the top right corner.
Step 3: In the Documents overlay, scroll to the Recommendation letters section, locate the teacher recommendation, and click the pencil icon to edit the title.
Note 1: If the Teacher Recommendation was previously requested by students and the teacher has not uploaded the Teacher Recommendation yet (pending status), you will need to wait on the upload from the Teacher’s side so that the editing pencil icon will show and become available to you to edit.
Note 2: The title of the Teacher Recommendation won’t affect the student’s application. Universities will only review the actual content of the Teacher Recommendation when conducting the assessment of the application.
Communicate with students
You can download our Teacher Recommendation Assignment spreadsheet in this Help Centre article. The spreadsheet can be used to communicate with your students to understand their preference of which teacher recommendation goes to which application.
If you have any questions, need further assistance or have some general feedback for us - we’d love to hear from you! Contact our Support team via Live Chat and by emailing hi@bridge-u.com.
Don't forget to check out our Document Sending Tips for the 2024-2025 season!
You can also ask our BridgeU Community, a space exclusively for our BridgeU counsellors to ask questions, share insights, provide feedback and get help not just from BridgeU, but directly from other BridgeU counsellors.