Comments on: Lies, damned lies, and references

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:50:00 +0000

Brunellus: indeed. But there must be a middle way between the absurdly hagiographic and muted understatement!

By: Brunellus

Brunellus — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:18:00 +0000

Several years ago my tutor told me that Oxford philosophers had been urged to boost their generally understated praises when giving references for BPhil applications, because the hagiographic references coming in from the States were making it hard for them to justify taking any home-grown candidates at all.

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Anon: It isn’t a matter of questions on a form (indeed there wasn’t one in this case). It is a matter of some referees exaggerating beyond reason.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:53:00 +0000

So what would be YOUR set of questions on the referee’s form, if they were to be accompanied with a set of objective and clear-cut criteria (and what criteria would that be)?

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Abo: Yep. Few of even the best students are wonderful: after all, very few of us are! So let’s have some straight talking, and in particular useful comparisons and rankings, rather than armwaving exalted praise!

By: abo

abo — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Hmm… so you want the referees to ensure that only the best students make applications, but you don’t like it when all the recs say wonderful things.

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:32:00 +0000

Referees weren’t asked “the 5% question”: I was remarking on the inflationary tropes that referees seem to radically overuse.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:13:00 +0000

“Second, it can’t be that every PhD student is one of the top 5% of students the referee has taught, etc. , etc., etc.”

Check the number of students, multiply by 5%, and you see it is possible that all those applying there can be among top 5%. :) This just shows that this 5% and asking faculty to decide which student is good (i.e., doing your job!) in place asking them specific questions like: is she intelligent? does she propose new ideas during your courses? … is not working. You want them to do your job, and of course it is not working. It is ridiculous when I am asked in reference forms of some universities to tell if this student was among top 1%, 3%, 5%, …