Applicant-Evaluation Forms: Even More Important than the Reference Letters

Almost all graduate-school applications requires at least two letters of recommendation (aka reference letter) as well as an evaluation form that accompanies the letter. Today, I would like to discuss these evaluation forms. Typically, the form has a few questions about what the referee thinks of the applicant’s abilities and potential. There is also another part to most evaluation forms, which most first-time applicants do not anticipate, and thus a lot of them suddenly get very nervous when they discover it. It is a list of general characteristics, abilities, or tendencies, on which the referee is asked to rank the applicant relative to an appropriate comparison group (such as all senior undergraduates they have known during their career). You may be wondering, … How important are these applicant evaluation forms?And how do they come into play when decisions are made about who gets into graduate school and who doesn’t? Let’s just say, they are extremely important – in fact, in most cases, they are even more influential than the reference letter!