Is it normal for students to ask for a lot of reference letters?

Question

I'm currently trying to apply to as many grad schools as I can (France) and all of them require one or more reference letters.

The past few months I feel like I have already bothered me enough with this matter. But unfortunately, some schools requires that the professor sends it personally, instead of having me acting as a middle man.

If I could just get them to write once and send that copy everywhere I would do it but in the current circumstances I cant. And I feel bad for asking more reference letters when their workload is already heavy.

Fortunately, the next deadline is 1 month away.

Answer 1

My solution as a student and my preferred solution as a prof who might get a lot of requests from a student would just be a heads up that a number of requests will be coming in the future months.

That lets the writer know that it is good to keep copies on file, or even prepare a template file for this student so that it takes little time or effort to send out the next letter. Some professors will write a general letter to send everywhere and some will tailor it for a given institution. As the prof, I would probably do a bit of both, depending on whether I had a relationship with the receiving institution and on whether the student is specially qualified for a position.

Don't make every request a surprise with a short deadline. That could be annoying.