This article explains how Teacher Recommendations work in BridgeU, and how to manage them as part of the Document Sending process.
Upload Teacher Recommendations
There are two ways a Teacher Recommendation can be added to a student's Document Sending page.
Method 1: Requested by students
Please refer to Teacher Recommendations Overview (For Students) to understand how students send teacher recommendation invitations.
When a student uses the Teacher Recommendations tool on their BridgeU platform to send a request to a teacher, the recommendation will automatically appear in Document Sending.
To view it, go to Document Sending > click the student's name > click Add/View Documents > scroll to the Recommendation Letters section.
Recommendation Status
Pending — the teacher has received the request but hasn't submitted the recommendation yet. You can track all teacher recommendation request statuses in Documents > Recommendation Letters tab (see this article).
Timestamp shown — the teacher has uploaded the PDF and submitted the recommendation.
For Parchment delivery, you can click the Parchment tab, select the Teacher Recommendation, and then send it out directly (see this article).
If the student is linked to Common App, go to the Documents section and open the Common App tab. Under Teacher Recommendations, select the relevant recommendation (for example, Nandini Science Teacher) and click into it.
Review the form details across sections such as Personal Details, School Details, and Written Evaluation, then click Save.
After that, choose the required universities, click Send, and confirm by clicking Send again in the pop-up to successfully submit the teacher recommendation. For more detailed guidance please refer to this article to learn how to send out a Common App Teacher Recommendation form for your students.
Important: If you haven't saved the form yet, the teacher can still edit it or re-upload the PDF. Once you've saved the form, the teacher can no longer make changes directly — they'll need to contact you to update anything.
Method 2: Counselor uploads the recommendation manually
Depending on your school's own policy or workflow, you might want to collect Teacher Recommendation letters on behalf of your students and upload them manually.
Step 1: Once you have the Teacher Recommendation letter as a PDF, navigate to the Document Sending page, find the student, and click on student's name.
Step 2: On the selected student's Document Sending page, click the Add/View Documents button in the top right corner.
Step 3: Click the Add Document button. From the Document type dropdown, choose Teacher Recommendation. Enter a clear, descriptive name for the file (for example, teacher’s name version 2 such as "Ms. Rachel – v2"), then browse and select the PDF to upload.
Step 4: Once uploaded, the letter will appear under the Recommendation Letters section on the student's profile.
Step 5 (Parchment): For Parchment delivery, please refer to this Help Centre article to send out the teacher recommendation.
Step 6 (Common App): If the student is paired with Common App and has Common App applications, please go to Common App tab > click into the teacher recommendation > fill out the form on behalf of the teacher > save the form and send out the teacher recommendation. Please also refer to this Help Centre article for more details.
Edit the title of Teacher Recommendations
You can rename a Teacher Recommendation directly from the Document overlay on each student's Document Sending page. This is especially useful when a student has two recommendation letters from the same teacher, as renaming them makes it easier and can help to distinguish them.
To edit the title of a Teacher Recommendation, please follow below steps:
Step 1: Go to Document Sending > locate the student and click the student's name
Step 2: On the student’s Document Sending page, click Add/View Documents button on the top right corner.
Step 3: In the Documents overlay, scroll to the Recommendation letters section, find the teacher recommendation you want to rename, and click the pencil icon to edit the title.
Note 1 : If a Teacher Recommendation was requested through the student-initiated workflow and the teacher hasn't uploaded the letter yet (status: Pending), the pencil icon will not appear to edit. You'll need to wait until the teacher completes the upload before the edit option becomes available.
Note 2: Renaming a Teacher Recommendation has no impact on the student's application. Universities only review the actual content of the Teacher Recommendation when conducting the assessment of the application.
Communicate with students
You can download our Teacher Recommendation Assignment spreadsheet in this Help Centre article.
The spreadsheet can be used to communicate with your students to understand their preference of which teacher recommendation goes to which application.
If you have any questions, need further assistance or have some general feedback for us - we’d love to hear from you! Contact our Support team via Live Chat and by emailing hi@bridge-u.com.
You can also ask our BridgeU Community, a space exclusively for our BridgeU counsellors to ask questions, share insights, provide feedback and get help not just from BridgeU, but directly from other BridgeU counsellors.