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Assigning Recommendations to Colleges

Corey Weaver Updated by Corey Weaver

Assigning teacher recommendations gives counselors and students control over exactly which recommendation goes to which college. Students or counselors can begin assignment steps immediately after a request is made — Scoir can assign a recommendation before the teacher has even started writing.

If your school uses the Scoir + Common App integration, the "Require assignment of recommendations to specific colleges" account setting is on by default and can't be turned off.

Why assignment matters

Requesting a recommendation and assigning it are two separate steps, and both have to happen before anything can be sent. Assignment happens one of two ways: automatically, through ranking, or manually. This article covers when to use each — and what to know once assignments are in place.

Option 1: Automatic assignment through ranking

Ranking lets a student and/or counselor set a preferred order for a student's recommendations. Once ranked, Scoir automatically fills each college's open recommendation spots at every college the student has marked Applying or Applied — if a college accepts two teacher recommendations, the #1 and #2 ranked recommendations are assigned; if it accepts one, #1.

Ranking can be set as early as the first request — the assignments themselves happen once the student has colleges in Applying or Applied.

Step-by-step ranking guides:

☝️ One thing ranking won't do: if a new recommendation is requested later, it does not insert itself into the ranking automatically. Update the ranking to include it, or it won't be counted toward assignments.

Option 2: Manual assignment

Use manual assignment when:

  • Ranking isn't set yet — ranking can always be set later to automatically assign to additional colleges
  • You need to override the automatic order — putting a specific recommender on a specific application
  • You're correcting an assignment before anything has been sent

Counselors can assign from a student's profile:

  • Go to Colleges & Applications → Send Documents, then click Manage Recommendations to assign an in-progress request or completed recommendation to an open requirement.
  • Or go to My Colleges, open the college card, and find the Application Document Status.

Students (if your school allows it) can assign from their own account, on the web or the mobile app:

  • Go to My Colleges, click the tile for the college, and scroll to the Letters of Recommendation section. Click Manage Assignments, choose the appropriate recommendations, and click Save.
  • To handle several at once, visit the Recs & Docs page and click Manage to assign in bulk instead of going college by college.

Important things to know

Once you manually assign, that application is yours to manage

Manually assigning a recommendation to a college takes that application out of ranking's control. From that point on, changes to the student's ranking won't touch that college — whatever was manually assigned stays in place until someone changes it by hand.

What happens if a student is no longer Applying

If a college's status moves back to Following (no longer Applying or Applied), any teacher recommendations assigned to it that haven't been sent yet are removed. This applies whether they were assigned through ranking or manually.

If the student later re-applies to that same college, ranking picks it back up automatically — the current ranking assigns recommendations to it just as it would for any newly active application. A previous manual assignment doesn't carry over, though: after a re-application, review that college's assignments to confirm ranking assigned what you'd expect, and redo any manual choices if needed.

When a student has both a general and a college-specific recommendation from the same teacher

The ranked general recommendation takes priority for Common App colleges and will be assigned to all of them. For non–Common App applications, the college-specific recommendation takes priority over the ranked general one, since Common App's one-letter-per-teacher rule doesn't apply there.

☝️ If your school allows college-specific recommendations: Common App permits only one letter per teacher across all of a student's Common App colleges. If a student wants a teacher's letter at multiple colleges, a general recommendation is the way. This is a Common App rule, not a Scoir limit — and it's why we recommend general recommendations over college-specific ones wherever possible.

What happens if an assigned recommendation is declined

If a teacher or counselor declines a recommendation that's already assigned to a college, that application is flagged as Needs Attention so the declined recommendation can be removed. From there:

  • Assigned through ranking: remove it from the ranking so it stops counting toward the student's assignments.
  • Assigned manually: simply assign a different completed recommendation to that college's open requirement.

Assigning "Other" recommendations

Other recommendations (from recommenders outside your school) can be assigned through ranking or manually when accepted by the college — but only to non–Common App applications. For Common App colleges, students continue to request and assign Other Recommenders directly in Common App.

How did we do?

Counselors: Ranking a Student's Recommendations

Counselors: Uploading recommendations on Behalf of Others

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