All departments require one or more letters of recommendation to complete your application. Below is more information about our Letter of Recommendation policies.
Adding a Recommender
Applicants will be asked to add a list of recommenders on the Recommendations page of the online application. When listing each recommender, applicants will be asked to provide the following information:
- Reference Type
- Name of Recommender
- Recommender’s organization
- Recommender’s position/title
- Recommender’s relationship with the applicant
- Recommender’s phone number
- Recommender’s email address*
- Custom message
- Applicants will also have an opportunity to write a custom message to the recommender listed when requesting their reference.
*Note: requests for recommendation are made automatically after adding a recommender’s information and selecting “Send to Recommender.” Applicants will not have access to the link for recommenders to submit their recommendation letter.
FERPA Choice
In each recommender submission, applicants will be required to select if they waive their right to access their letter of recommendation or if they maintain their right to access their letter of recommendation under FERPA policy.
Be advised, this choice cannot be changed after sending your request for a recommendation.
Letters of Recommendation Policies
Listing your recommenders is a requirement for submitting your application. Applicants may submit their application prior to receiving all of their letters of recommendation, but fulfillment of your letter of recommendation request is required to complete your application for review.
- It is the responsibility of the applicant to check department policy prior to the application deadline if they know a letter of recommendation will be late.
- Some departments are lenient about the due date for letters if recommenders are late turning in their recommendation, but this is not a guarantee.
- Applicants cannot change the contact information for any of their recommenders after they have submitted their application.
- Be sure to carefully review all of the information you submit as part of your recommender’s history for accuracy as this information cannot be changed after submitting your application.
- Applicants cannot add new recommenders after they have submitted their application.
- If you exclude a recommender after you submit your application, you will not be able to add a new recommender or undo your exclusion.
- If you exclude a recommender and you no longer meet the number of recommendation letters required for review, your application may be marked incomplete and you will be disqualified from consideration.
- Departments reserve the right to implement their incomplete application policies as necessary.
- Letters of recommendation cannot be shared between multiple applications. Each application will require unique letters of recommendation in order to be considered for admission to MIT.
- Applicants cannot change their response to the “waiver of rights” question after the request for a recommendation has been sent.
- Requests for recommendation letters are automatically sent via the application portal, and initiating the request process will automatically lock in your response to the “waiver of rights.”
Please note: due to the volume of applications MIT receives, we cannot make any exceptions to the above policies.
