Does your school have a Center for Career Services or any other type of center that handles letters of rec? If so, you should use them. You can't really hold onto the letters yourself. The center would hold onto a copy from each recommender, then when you tell the center, they forward it to the schools you want. The letters of Rec are generally not supposed to be included with the packet of application material that you send, but rather sent seperately (as was the case for all of the schools I applied to). I dont think that your idea would be a true closed file. You are really not supposed to have contact with the letters at all (you could, for example, tell your Prof to write a letter of rec to the Medical College of South Baton Rouge, which doesnt exist, and then read that one).
As for the forms... out of all the schools that I got secondaries from, only ONE of them had a form for the reccomender to write on (Ohio State), and they didnt care if the letter was on their form, or simply attatched.
The sooner you can get the recommenders writing the better though. You will have to remind them usually - "Hey did you get a chance to start on that letter of Rec?" "Oh, no, sorry, been real busy." (thats a typical response from people that have classes to teach, patients to see, etc.).
This was my experience anyhow...
[This message has been edited by docuw (edited April 03, 2001).]
