Re: Dear Dr. Geebie, we value your input.

1

And after I submitted the recommendation, I got this:

Would you like to learn more about career opportunities at [large textbook company]? Yes No
By selecting Yes, you may be contacted by an HR representative at [large textbook company].

!!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 10:56 AM
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Is 7 considered the best answer? I'd think it indicates overrelying on a particular skill- you really don't want someone who only uses MS Office products to do all their work. I'd think this is one of those surveys where the middle range is better.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 10:58 AM
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This reminds me. I'm supposed to call job applicants today. I'm not sure why I went presidential. Apparently, doing my actual job is what I find embarassing.


Posted by: Gerald Ford | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 10:58 AM
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4

Actually, I have a related bleg:

An extremely reliable, conscientious student sends the following:

[This job app] asks for me to upload the letter of recommendation, so would it be possible for you to write a letter and send it to me as an attachment so that I can upload it to the [website]? I find it funny that they don't want the references to send the letters directly to them, but I guess they don't want to deal with the paper work.

I don't know why, but I'm squeamish about sending reference letters along to the former student, even when they are entirely glowing. Or maybe that's why - it's so gushing that it's embarrassing. So I don't know what to do.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:05 AM
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Is 7 considered the best answer? I'd think it indicates overrelying on a particular skill- you really don't want someone who only uses MS Office products to do all their work. I'd think this is one of those surveys where the middle range is better.

I interpreted it to mean that "mostly 6s and 7s" would be taken as "strong candidate", even though as phrased, that's completely nonsensical. I did not want to risk sending in 3s and 4s.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:06 AM
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I don't understand how that works? Do they want a pdf so it's still signed or do they (the employer) have a plan to call you or some other way to see that the note is, if not geniune, at least forged by somebody willing to put forth some effort in the fraud?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:08 AM
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7

6 to 4.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:08 AM
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I was only recently introduced to the concept of a composite recommendation letter, which is apparently now accepted by med and law schools as if it is not the most appalling shit I've ever heard of. Do you, Dr. Bear, want to spend hours reading through Student's past work and writing up a detailed, personal, and nuanced letter about her abilities, qualities, and narratives of academic triumph in order to hand it over to her adviser, who will excerpt it as "Student is a good writer"? No, thank you.

I'm still feeling bad about not writing it, but I offered to write a letter that would be opened by the admissions committee and she declined. I suppose this is something about the new world that I will have to learn to swallow at some point.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:09 AM
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4: Nope, I wouldn't do it either. I just inform the student that recommendation letters should be opened by the persons to whom they are addressed and I'm happy to send them myself if necessary. If they have to upload something, have them upload a note saying a letter is on its way from Dr. Geebie.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:11 AM
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@4

I hate it when places make submitting recommendation letters more complicated than it needs to be.

What's so hard about "Send letters directly to admissions@school.edu"?


Posted by: AcademicLurker | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:12 AM
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I just got online and located the school and gave them a call. The voicemail of the HR person assigned to job applications is full. That inspires confidence.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:15 AM
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Is 7 considered the best answer?

I once distributed a document that made Clippy threaten my coworkers' children unless they wanted to learn more about the new features of Word 97.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:16 AM
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13

Did you actually make Clippy appear and to those things or did you just use screen shots of Clippy?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:21 AM
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12 is awesome.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:25 AM
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You could/can make Clippy say anything you like. There was a glorified macro language called Visual Basic for Applications.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:27 AM
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16

"No, I can't email you a graph of my results. I verbally communicate at all times and under all circumstances."


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:33 AM
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I try to learn one new, useful thing every week and 15 fills my quota.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:33 AM
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18

7: either that or 25


Posted by: Chicago | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:37 AM
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19

8: So the composite letter is an adviser's "summary" of several professors' actual letters? That's ridiculous.


Posted by: Sir Kraab | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 11:48 AM
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19: I only learned of their existence when a former thesis advisee of mine asked for a letter, I asked to whom I was sending it, and she explained that I was sending it to her adviser to be excerpted and edited before being sent. I said that's not a recommendation letter; give me addresses of schools. She never responded.

It turns out, though, that this is how they're done these days. I have zero interest in participating in this kind of thing, but am afraid that the time is coming when my failure to participate is actually my failure to support my students in a time of real need. I'll have to, I guess. But in that case, I will probably just submit soundbites instead of the carefully crafted rhetorical masterpieces I usually create for students.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 12:13 PM
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I have some complaints of my own about stupidly-designed surveys. My problem was basically that the survey was phrased ridiculously broadly and I tend to be literal-minded, but heebie's is kind of the opposite problem.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 1:11 PM
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8, 20: I have never heard of such a thing and I don't think I'd go along with it. (And I _hate_ writing recommendation letters.)


Posted by: Cosma Shalizi | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 1:27 PM
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4: Well, at least you would let your student know what constitutes a glowing recommendation. When I was in grad school, several of my professors had a practice of telling us to write our own recommendation letters and they would sign them. My concern with that practice was if I wrote what I considered a fair assessment of my own work, it would wind up sounding like it was damning my work with faint praise relative to standard recommendations. Not being in a position where I was routinely reading recommendation letters, I had no idea how many "exceptional"s it took to accurately convey "solid student, has done some pretty good work" in recommendationese.


Posted by: Dave W. | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 1:46 PM
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8: Ugh.

I don't see how that would even contain information.


Posted by: Benquo | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 1:54 PM
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re: 23

Same thing happened to me. My doctoral supervisor asked me to write my own letter. Which is a fucking dick head move. There's no way I'd write a letter self-aggrandising enough to compete with actual recommendation letters.

I wasn't supposed to see the letters my undergraduate institution wrote on my behalf when I applied to Oxford (but did), and they were massively more complimentary -- 'best student in X years', 'easily the best MA thesis in Y years', 'we believe he can turn water into wine, and walk on water' etc -- than anything I would/could write, and these were a long time ago, and I have the strong impression that letter inflation has gone a long way since.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 3:24 PM
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20: At my school the Senior Tutor /dean had to write a general letter for law and medical school. You may have also gotten individual letters of recommendation. You were supposed to get anyone who ever thought you had done well to write one as soon as you finished their class and while they still knew who you were to write one. The material was used to write a general one. I also think that before 1996 or so the Senior Tutors also read them and without revealing what was in the letters made decisions about which ones should be held back. Around 1996 they said something about the rules getting much stricter and therefore people need to be much more careful about who they ask.

Law school admission is mostly, except in unusual circumstances, based on GPA and LSAT score anyway. Isn't it?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 4:12 PM
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27

NMM Sally Ride


Posted by: beamish | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 4:16 PM
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Hrm, I've sent some rec letters to the postbac premed office, for what I now assume is for composite letters. Doesn't really bother me, then again I can't say I put hours into it. There's no point writing more than people are going to read.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 9:01 PM
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Exactl


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 9:06 PM
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Whether admissions committees at med schools are outsourcing part of their work to people in premed offices doesn't seem like a fight I really care about either way.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 9:13 PM
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30: But don't you think those two different groups might excerpt and read letters differently?

I have willingly participated in composite recommendations when it's all up-front, for in-college honors. Please tell us in an email, Dr. Bear, how Student's performance relates to her promise as a Whatever Major. Did she do anything that makes you feel she is or is not an asset to the college? Cool, fine. But don't ask me to write you a letter (which for me is a serious undertaking) so you can yank a few adjectives you like without my knowledge.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 9:23 PM
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If you're in the type of relationship where it is openly discussed, a few yanked adjectives shouldn't matter.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 9:29 PM
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It seems pretty likely to me that the people doing the first pass of med school letter reading are very similar to the people who work in pre-med offices. The main difference I can think of would be that the people in the local pre-med offices would have more local expertise and so would better be able to compare grades in premed classes between different professors.

At any rate, I stand by my claim that there's no point in spending hours writing rec letters. How long does it take to say where they ranked in students you have and what caliber of schools they should get in to?


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 9:55 PM
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34

The logical endpoint here is that schools just rank all their premeds and send that list to med schools.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 10:05 PM
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35

What if I said something negative? Shouldn't a student be willing to risk that I might say she's a decent student but not particularly thoughtful or something? I would not write such a letter unless pressed to do so despite reservations, but the premed adviser takes away any risk from the process.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 10:23 PM
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36

But honestly, I'm not as pissed about the editing as the excerpting. In my case, I'm writing a letter, not providing data points, unless asked to do so. Being asked to write a letter, which I later find out is going to be mined for data rather than sent, is really shitty.


Posted by: AWB | Link to this comment | 07-23-12 10:33 PM
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37

To follow up on 4, I emailed the college, and got this:

Thank you for your inquiry with the [college] Human Resources Department.
Please send the letter to the applicant, and he/she will be able to upload the recommendation to the position that they are applying to.
Ok then.
Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-24-12 7:09 AM
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I try to write recommendation letters as factually as possible, because those are the ones I like to read. Examples ftw!

I still don't understand people who did a lousy job and/or people who got let go and yet who ask for a recommendation. I cannot fathom the thought process. I vacillate between "They have no one else to ask; they burnt their bridges even worse with other employers than with me" and "Despite numerous explanations and examples while in my employ, they failed to understand that they were doing a lousy job."

Alternatively, maybe they just see recommendations letters as another checkbox to complete, and don't understand that some people actually read them. I honestly have no idea.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 07-24-12 7:24 AM
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37 is really lame. Way to get dumb data, college.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 07-24-12 7:24 AM
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Best line ever from a recommendation: [Candidate] is great in a crisis. If you don't have a crisis, she'll create one.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 07-24-12 7:30 AM
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I vacillate between "They have no one else to ask; they burnt their bridges even worse with other employers than with me" and "Despite numerous explanations and examples while in my employ, they failed to understand that they were doing a lousy job."

Probably the first. The thought process is "They probably won't look at the letter anyway, and if I get my mom to write one it'll look bad."


Posted by: Cryp[tic ned | Link to this comment | 07-24-12 7:36 AM
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