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The 2026-2027 DO School Specific Threads are now available in the School Specific Discussions forum. The 2025-2026 discussions are now available in the prior year discussions forum.
Waiving my rights?
Started by RubberToe
Waive your right to access your letters. Letters of recommendation are meant to be confidential evaluations of your experience with said writers.
Waiving your rights means you have not had access to the final letter of recommendation and therefore have not had an opportunity to edit, promote or delete any particular letters. You get what you get from the LOR writer and thats it.
You gotta ask yourself...do you trust your LOR writer? Well? Do you?
it is better to waive your rights...a confidential letter means that you trust the recommender enough to give you a fair evaluation. if you do not waive your rights, you could potentially have seen your letter before hand and told the recommender to edit the letter. not saying that you have done this, but waiving your rights assures the adcoms that it is a completely confidential letter and you had no influence as to what the contents of the letter might be.
waiving your rights does not mean you have not seen the letter. my professor gave me the letter to edit before he submitted it, but i still waived my rights on the application. i may be wrong, but i think you waive your rights to access the letters after they have been submitted to the school. letters are supposed to be sent directly from the writer, so it is understood that applicants have only seen the letter unless the writer has given it to the applicant. imo, waiving your right to access letters is the courteous thing to do. afterall, if the writer wanted you to see the letter, he/she would have given it to you. the only reason not to waive your right is if you want to access your letter without the writer knowing it. personally, i think that is wrong.
