The University of Michigan complies with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the federal law that governs release of and access to student education records.
The Office of the Registrar provides additional information along with a description of Student Rights and Student Records. Please review the information below to learn more about why FERPA compliance is an important part of any ONSF scholarship or fellowship application process.
Why does ONSF need a FERPA form?
When letters of recommendation are sent to ONSF they become part of your educational record. The Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) gives you the right to inspect your educational record unless you have expressly waived your right to do so. (A FERPA request of this kind is like a FOIA request).
Thus, whenever ONSF receives and files letters as part of a scholarship/fellowship nomination process, we must have a FERPA form on file stating whether or not you waive access to your letters.
Does my letter writer need to sign and submit a FERPA form?
No. The FERPA form informs ONSF whether you have waived the right to access your letters of recommendation. However, your letter writers also need to know your selection before submitting their letter - in other words, the letter writer needs to know whether the letter is confidential or not.
Some scholarships require that the letter writer submit a FERPA form signed by you along with the letter to ensure that this communication has taken place. However, this places an extra burden on the letter writer to receive and attach a separate form. Instead, our online application management system allows you to make a FERPA selection for each of your recommenders. When you send your recommendation requests to your recommenders, they will be informed of your FERPA choice in the automated email.
Why confidential letters?
ONSF does not require that you waive access to your letters of recommendation. However, some letter writers may only agree to write and submit a letter if it is confidential. Why would they require confidentiality? Typically this is not because they will say anything bad about you. You have selected letter writers who think highly of you and have agreed to write in support of your application. However, strong letters of recommendation often contain comparative information that letter writers would not want to be publicly available.
For example, if a letter says that you are the best student in your cohort within a particular department, the letter writer may not want that information to be passed indirectly to other students within the department. On the other hand, a letter writer may think very highly of you and provide a strong recommendation in other respects, but rank you as the second strongest student in your cohort. For this reason, confidential letters are usually considered more candid and official by committees.
If ONSF receives a letter that is negative - especially if it contains evidence of implicit bias or other problematic language - we may reach out directly to the letter writer to initiate a conversation, or may suggest that you seek an alternate letter without revealing specific information that would break the confidentiality of the letter writer. Note that there are other reasons that we will ask you to seek an alternate letter writer, so don’t assume that this is because the letter writer said something negative about you.
How should a student submit their FERPA decision?
All of our nominated scholarships are run under the same U-M application management system, InfoReady. The section at the end of an application is where students add information for their recommenders. The email sent to your recommenders will indicate if you choose to waive their right or not. Once a student sends an email to a letter writer, their FERPA choice is recorded and sent to the recommender. In addition to the email serving as a FERPA waiver, it also allows ONSF to store letters of recommendation on U-M technology.
In each application, your email message is pre-populated to say that you waive your FERPA rights to read these letters from your references, using the following statement:
This student waived their right of access to or inspection of this letter of recommendation. This means that the University of Michigan has no obligation under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to provide a copy of your letter to the student. You may choose to do so on your own if you wish but students who have waived access have no legal right to view letters of recommendation.
If you do not waive your rights, you are instructed to change your letter by deleting the previous statement, and instead inserting the statement below:
This student has not waived their right of access to or inspection of this letter of recommendation. This means that the University must provide a copy of this letter to the student if they request to see it.
To send out these email requests for letters, you must first save a draft of your application, and then hit the “send reference letter request” for each reference. Please note, there are no batch send options available.
This should send an automated email reply to the recommender, which includes an online submission link where the recommender can upload their letter to a student's application (see "Letters of Recommendation" below for more details).
Once letter requests have been sent, you may not change your FERPA waiver decision.
Are there other ONSF policies for applicants that I should know about?
Yes. Prospective and current applicants should review ONSF Policies for Applicants for an overview of expectations and responsibilities.
Please email ONSF at onsf.info@umich.edu with any questions regarding FERPA forms or policies.
