Please enter your recommender contact information as early as possible to ensure your recommender is able to complete the recommendation by the deadline. Your recommender should be someone who has known you for two or more years and who is not a relative or member of your family and/or someone in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics) field who is familiar with your academic work. Make sure that your recommender will be able to complete their recommendation by the deadline via the online system. We cannot accept letters via mail or email. We highly recommend emailing your recommender before submitting to ensure that you have a valid email address. You may want to copy and paste the email address from a successful email communication to minimize entry errors. Recommenders must complete their recommendations by the application deadline. Applicants are responsible for ensuring their recommendations are received prior to the deadline. Any applications that do not receive a completed recommendation by the deadline will not be evaluated for scholarship consideration.
Remember that your recommender must submit their recommendation by the deadline for your application to be considered complete. Here are some suggestions to help make that happen:
Get your recommender’s agreement and understanding before submitting their contact information. The recommendation process is:
- You submit contact information for your recommender
- Recommender immediately receives their login email.
- Recommender follows link in email and logs into Kaleidoscope.
- Once logged into Kaleidoscope they will see your recommendation request waiting for them to complete. By clicking “View” they can begin working on completing the recommendation and are able to save their progress until they are ready to submit.
- Once you have their agreement, submit their contact information as early as possible to give them as much time as possible. Please note, SWE will not accept any recommendations after the deadline has passed.
- Recommenders receive weekly email reminders until they have completed their recommendation.
- Confirm that they received their login email and offer your help if they have not received the email.
- Recommender emails often land in the spam/junk folder, or are blocked by school district firewalls. If your recommender is still unable to locate the email, you can advise them to follow these instructions.
Log into Kaleidoscope: https://apply.mykaleidoscope.com/login (External) from there they will be prompted to set up a password if they have not logged into Kaleidoscope before. Make sure you advise your recommender to log into their account with the email address you submitted in your application. Once logged in, their dashboard will show your recommendation request that needs to be completed.
If your recommender needs additional assistance, please have them email help@mykaleidoscope.com.
Applicants are responsible for monitoring the status of your recommender’s submittals by viewing your application in the Kaleidoscope portal. Your application card will reflect your contributor status and by clicking on that number you can view the individual status of your request. Please ensure that your recommendations are complete by the deadline. Your application will not be considered if the recommendation is not completed by the application deadline. Once your recommendation is complete the contributor status on your application card will display as “1/1 completed.”