How to Request a Letter of Recommendation on Naviance
Letters of recommendation are key components of your college application. There are various ways to request these letters. Some schools want you to do so through the Common App. Others ask you to make the request on their proprietary application. And many schools have you do so through your Naviance account. Below we explain how to request a letter of recommendation via Naviance.
7 Steps for Requesting a Letter of Recommendation in Naviance
1) Log into your Naviance account.
2) Access the Letters of Recommendation Request hyperlink. There are a couple ways you can find this button:
• Click on the Colleges Applying To button and scroll down to the Letters of Recommendation Request hyperlink OR
• Click on the Home button, then click on Letters of Recommendation
3) Once you are on the Letters of Recommendation screen, you will see your list of schools. Click on one of the two Add Request buttons.
4) Next, click on the Select a Teacher button. Review the list of teachers and select the teacher you want to ask for a recommendation.
5) Select the schools you want to receive the recommendation. If this teacher’s letter of recommendation is only going to be sent to select schools, click the box next to each school to which you want to send this teacher’s letter of recommendation. If you want to send the recommendation to all the schools on your list, click on the Select All button and you will see all of the check marks next to those schools that allow letters of recommendation. More times than not you’re going to send it to all the schools that require or even allow letters of recommendation. There are some schools that don’t allow letters of recommendation at all and there are some that only allow one. For example, SUNY Binghamton only allows one letter of recommendation and University Pittsburgh does not want any.
6) Send a note to the teacher. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and you will see a box for you to type in a note to your teacher. We always have our students write a note to the teacher thanking them for agreeing to write their letter recommendation. In this note, if you have previously sent the teacher some information relating to them writing your letter of recommendation, or are planning to send them this information (i.e., resume), you can let them know this in this note to them.
7) Once you have written your teacher’s note, click on the Submit button, which is on the bottom right corner. That teacher will show up on the screen and you will see the status of the recommendation letter.
Be sure to monitor the status of your letters of recommendation. Once the status changes from Requested to either In Progress or Submitted, you will know that the teacher has completed the recommendation and it has been submitted.
One Important Note: Always ask your teacher if they will write a letter of recommendation BEFORE you add them because you need their agreement before you move forward with the above steps.
