how many recomendations?

Go ahead and ask them, but make it as painless for them as possible. Place all the forms with their own self-addressed stamped envelopes all together in one large brown envelope, and send thank-you notes to each of them AFTER they have sent your letters.

I'm in the middle of applying to 6 programs around here and all I need now are the recomendations. The problem is that I already feel strange asking people for recomendations in the first place and even MORE strange asking them to do it six times - often with different forms to fill out for each school. I don't really have that many people to ask, so it's not like I can really spread things around. What do you guys think, should I just ask them to do it? Thoughts?

Thanks!

I had the same problem and I'll tell you what I was told: Now is the time to branch out, network and ask for support in helping you reach your goals. Some schools may ask for recs from different sorts of people like instructors, peers, supervisors, MDs, CRNAs, maybe even a charge nurse. Try to spread it out that way. If not, I would have a discussion with the people you have in mind about what you're trying to do, tell them you are applying to six schools, and ask how many recs they would like to help you out with. I was surprised at how many people actually seemed excited to write recs for me. Good Luck!

I think the main thing in getting your reccomendations is to give the person plenty of time to write/fill out the reccomendation (at least a month) and give them a specific deadline. Personally, I really didnt want to spread around the work of filling out my reccomendations, because the people I chose to write them were the people I most admired and trusted and I didnt want to compromise with that. On the other hand, I only needed reccomendations for two applications, so I didnt think it was too much to ask.