Is it common to rate someone by % in LOR?

[moto_za]

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My school gives an instruction sheet to give to the letter writer and one of the requirements is to rate the applicant compared to others. Is he/she in the upper 1%, 5%, 10% etc of students that you have met? Is this common and how is it viewed by adcomms?
And one last question, does it look better for a LOR writer to say that this student is one of the best/top among the students he I have met or is better to say he is in the upper 10%?

 

[Livingapparatus]

My school gives an instruction sheet to give to the letter writer and one of the requirements is to rate the applicant compared to others. Is he/she in the upper 1%, 5%, 10% etc of students that you have met? Is this common and how is it viewed by adcomms?
And one last question, does it look better for a LOR writer to say that this student is one of the best/top among the students he I have met or is better to say he is in the upper 10%?

just another test I guess, Ive never seen that before n=1

 

[chitownGpremed]

i heard rankings like that are more common in other fields, like math and physics, but I might be wrong.

 

[lord_jeebus]

It's not uncommon, but most letters don't do this.

I think it is very helpful from the adcom side - sometimes you see something like "this was the second strongest student I have had in my twenty year teaching career" and that means a lot more than "this was one of my best students."

 

[BrnEyes]

My school gives an instruction sheet to give to the letter writer and one of the requirements is to rate the applicant compared to others. Is he/she in the upper 1%, 5%, 10% etc of students that you have met? Is this common and how is it viewed by adcomms?

My school definitely does this. Whether or not it will help you, I think, is common sense. If your teacher is really going to give you a strong recommendation, having these checkboxes where he or she can say you were in the X% of students taught in the past 20 years (or whatever) is really going to make you shine compared to letters which don't have such a form attached (and in which the writer doesn't make comparable statements).

However, if your letter writer is going to write you some generic, meaningless letter because he or she doesn't know you very well, the checkboxes can really put the magnifying glass to that issue. As an example, I think the last question on our form asks the writer how they would rate us as an applicant for medical school (outstanding-poor...something like that). Others may have different opinions, but I think it can make your letter even stronger/weaker depending on the situations described above.

Additionally, if you're applying in TX, they have a similar form which you can check out http://www.utsystem.edu/tmdsas/TMDSAS Evaluation Form.pdf to see kind of what the OP and I have been talking about.

Just my 2 cents.🙂

 

[LizzyM]

I could name a few schools I know of that use this type of system. It does help us compare students from the same school and it is easier to understand than the qualitative categorization that some schools use that sound good until you read a few more letters from the same school and figure out that "outstanding" is actually fourth tier below Exceptional, Excellent, and Superior.😱

 

[Scean]

my school uses this system:

We receive a "Pre-med packet" sometime sophomore or junior year which includes a biographical/essay sheet to turn into the premed advisor, and 4-5 Instructor evaluation forms. These forms have questions like the OP described and they also ask for additional comments at the end, i.e. an actual letter.

 

[moto_za]

Appreciate all the responses! Not sure how good this is, but my P.I mentioned in the letter that I am among the top students he has worked with and then in another paragraph he said that I am among the best students he has ever seen. And then ended the letter by saying exceptional candidate, etc

 

[pianola]

...and figure out that "outstanding" is actually fourth tier below Exceptional, Excellent, and Superior.😱

. How depressing.

Prediction: Pretty soon, with grade inflation on the rise, people with 4.53 GPAs and OUTSTANDING rec letters are no longer going to be considered competitive by ADCOMs.