Letter Of Recommendation - Permission To Release Education: Fill & Download for Free

I recommend you waive it. Tick YES on the application.You have the option to waive ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ when you submit your application to graduate school.Let me give you some background knowledge.The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), also known as the Buckley Amendment, was passed to protect the privacy of students' educational records. It gives parents and students who are 18 years and older the right to access their records. It also requires that parents or eligible students give permission before their information is released to a third party, except in special circumstances like transferring schools or a health emergency.Source: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act - WikipediaLetters of recommendation in university admissions are ideally meant to be kept confidential.Graduate admissions officers give most weight to letters that provide an honest and qualified assessment of the applicant. If you don't waive your FERPA right, you could accidentally signal to admissions officers that you don't trust your recommender or that the recommendation is less candid or genuine. Your recommender might also get the subtle message that you don't trust him or her. The knowledge that you'll see the letter at some point in the future might cause your recommender to write a more generic letter, and thus be less powerful and effective in support of your candidacy.You won't be penalized for your response, but it's risky to check "no" since you don't know how admissions officers or your recommenders will interpret it.For more details Should I Waive My Right to Review Recommendation Letters?

In the US, those evaluations will not be seen by any prospective employer, unless you give written permission. Even then, the department might consider them internal documents and decline to release them. The confidentiality of your student records is guaranteed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).Those assessments might affect the recommendation letters that faculty write for you. However, the people you ask for letters are likely to be the ones who conducted the assessments, so I doubt they would learn much new from them.

Here is how it looks in the Common App:“I just clicked the box thinking it has no effect” - which box?As you can see, there are two parts to FERPA - first part is the permission to your school to release your information, and the second part is the right to review the recommendations. So which boxes did you click?I hope you read the first part and authorized your school to release the information needed for your application (transcript etc). You did, didn’t you?That’s what the College Board says in Applicant Support:1. How does FERPA relate to your college application?FERPA regulates the privacy of student education records, which could include your application to the college where you enroll. FERPA also gives you the right to review confidential letters of recommendation provided as part of that application after you enroll.2. In the application you'll be asked if you want to waive the right to review confidential letters of recommendation.What you should you know about this waiver?Waiving your right lets colleges know that you do not intend to read your recommendations, which helps reassure colleges that the letters are candid and truthful.Some recommenders may decline to write a letter for you if you do not waive your rights. Check with your counselor or teachers to see if any of them follow such a policy.About the second part: if a student didn’t waive the right to see the recommendations, the student can see these letters ONLY AFTER s/he is accepted and enrolls into the college. So, for now, you cannot check what they wrote (I understand that it wasn’t your intention to see the letters, but I just wanted to make it clear.) If the student isn’t accepted, or is accepted but doesn’t enroll, the student cannot see the recommendations - even if they didn’t waive FERPA right.Anyway, since you cannot change anything in the submitted application(s), whatever you clicked will stay. I don’t think you should worry about the second part, even if you didn’t click the right box (waiver). If you are a good student, your teachers and counselor will write positive recommendations for you, and it shouldn’t be a problem for them if they know that you potentially will be able to read their letters.But it’s a lesson for you for the future - always read the instructions and the “fine print”. If you don’t understand something in the form/contract then ask somebody who is able to explain it to you. Don’t click or sign something you don’t fully understand.