Unified Recommendation Form

After careful consideration, the Biology Department has decided to adopt the Unified Recommendation Form, as proposed by Charles King in the January 23, 2004 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education:


Name of Applicant_______________________________

The person above is filing an application for our:
___________ graduate program
___________ fellowship program
___________ other (specify) ___________________
and has given you as a reference.  Please provide a frank assessment of the applicant's abilities by answering the questions below.  Separate letters will be considered only if they are written on official stationery or a series of $20 bills.

1. How long have you known the applicant?
__________ years
__________ months
__________ minutes

2. Time since last contact with applicant
___________ decades
___________ years
___________ days

3. In what capacity have you known the applicant (check all that apply)?
___________ professor in only one class
___________ professor in more than one class
___________ major advisor
___________ mentor
___________ Svengali
___________ other (specify) _______________

*************************************************************
4. Please rate the applicant's abilities in questions 6 through 14, according to the following scale:
1 = oh, puh-LEEZE
2 = not recommended
3 = recommended with reservations
4 = recommended with a soupçon of misgiving
5 = highly recommended, yet with a lingering feeling of unease
6 = very highly recommended
7 = highest recommendation
8 = a blockbuster - I laughed, I cried.  Better than The Lord of the Rings.
9 = unable to judge
10 = able to judge but disinclined to throw stones in a glass house.

If you rank all applicants 7 or 8, please go to question 5.  Otherwise, skip to question 6.

5. Answers to questions 6 through 14 should be given a discount factor of roughly:
__________25 percent
__________50 percent
__________75 percent
__________100 percent
Now skip to question 15.

6. Intellectual ability ______________________
7. Curiosity _____________________________
8. Maturity _____________________________
9. Leadership ____________________________
10. Drive _______   (automobile used for evaluation)_______________
11. Potential as a teacher ___________________
12. Writing ability _________________________
13. Capacity for fulsome self-promotion ________
14. Ability to feed family of three on graduate-student stipend without resorting to felonious activity ______________

*************************************************************
15. This applicant is likely to be given (you may check more than one):
____________ a Nobel
____________ a MacArthur
____________ a Guggenheim
____________ a Fulbright
____________ a half nelson
____________ early release

16. Would you say this student:
____________ is your best student in the last year
____________ is your best student in the last 5 years
____________ is your best student in the last 20 years
____________ is not your best but one of the best in the last year
____________ is not your best but one of the best in the last several years
____________ is not close to your best and, in fact, verges on the worst
____________ haunts the corridors of your mind

17. If the applicant's native language is not English, please evaluate English proficiency:
___________ poor
___________ not great, but better than President Bush's
___________ very good
___________ excellent except for occasional use of the word "othering" and insistence that "impact" works fine as a verb

18. Over all, how would you rate this student's chances of success in graduate school:
___________ strong
___________ good
___________ anybody's guess, really
___________ snowballs and hell come to mind

19. If Woody Allen is right that those who can't do, teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym, which career path is the applicant likely to pursue?
___________ doing
___________ teaching
___________ gym

20. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, this applicant would most likely (choose one):*
___________ write a poem about it
___________ perform tree-ring analysis on it
___________ attempt to replant it
___________ build a house with it
___________ find out who is responsible

*Under the USA Patriot Act, university officials are required to forward all  responses to this question to the Department of Homeland Security.


Sincerely yours,

Dr. Stan