Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Graduate Schools must hate recommendation writers

It's that time of year when undergraduate students are busily preparing dossiers for graduate school admissions. I was asked by one of our best students to write a letter of recommendation for her. This, being one of the things I'm paid to do, I happily obliged. But then, I started looking at all these forms. It used to be that one could substitute a letter for the official form supplied by the institution. But in today's world of online applications, more schools are requiring the recommender to use their STUPID bothering (Jeremy, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery) form. So I have a student who has applied to 4 different programs and must fill out 3 different forms, each asking slightly different questions. I can can cut and paste from my 500 word letter of recommendation, but must do so differently for each school (not to craft the recommendation to fit the school, which I would do with a letter anyway, but to satisfy the stupid freaking administrative layout of the stupid bothering form).