We often get questions from First Year applicants regarding the counselor evaluation and teacher recommendation. These questions range from where to find these forms to how we are using this information in the file review process. Both forms are important in the review of a student’s file. Here are some tips on why they are important as well as how to have these forms sent to us.
The high school evaluation not only tells us about you, it tells us about your school as well. The first page of the evaluation tells us about your school’s grading scale, the most difficult courses available at your school, how many honors/AP/IB courses are available, etc. This information lets us know about your school’s curriculum. This is important because we are reviewing your curriculum based on what you have available to you. The second page is where your high school counselor tells us about your curriculum. He or she will rate your curriculum difficulty for each of the five academic areas. If you have any questions about the classes you are taking or planning to take, it’s always best to start with your high school counselor.
We have an electronic and paper version of our high school evaluation. The online form is better in that it can be automatically dropped into your file once we receive it. In fact, it will generally show up as received in an applicant’s myStatus within 2 to 3 business days after it has been submitted. If you submit a paper document, we have to receive it in the mail, scan it into our file system and match it to your file. This means you will not be able to see if we have received your HS evaluation as quickly as someone who has had an online evaluation sent. Your counselor can find our online form through the counselor portal. You can also generate an email to your counselor with a link directly to the online form from your myStatus!
A teacher recommendation is required for all First Year applicants who apply Regular Decision or are deferred from Early Action. We want to see how you are as a student in the classroom. We would like one teacher recommendation from a junior or senior year teacher in an academic area class. If you send us more than one recommendation, we are not always going to be able to focus on everything in each letter as volume can drown out details. As with the high school evaluation, we have an online and paper copy of this form. You can also send an email to your teacher with a link to the online form from your myStatus. We can accept electronic recommendations through Docufide as well. Online forms, again, are better because they will be in your file much more quickly than a paper copy. And remember, no faxes!
It is always better if you submit your application prior to sending any supplemental material. If we do not have an application for you when you submit material, it will be placed in our holding file. Right now we have about 9,200 documents in our holding file waiting to be matched with an application. If you were to stack those documents, that’s roughly 8 feet of paper! It can take at least 5 to 10 business days for us to match material submitted prior to an applicant submitting the application and even longer closer to a deadline. We strongly recommend that you apply to UGA before you have material from your high school sent. We leave the online teacher recommendation and high school evaluation open for at least a week after the application deadline, so even if you are waiting until closer to the deadline to apply you will still have time to apply first.
Go Dawgs!