Sending in peer rec-- bad idea?

modestmelody
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:41:26 +0000

I think there is a lot of reason why a peer rec sounds a lot better on paper than it would be in practice. There are many reasons to not use peer recs and I’m not a fan for a lot of reasons. It creates burden on other students who are also going through the admissions process, it requires a maturity level of someone you’re not evaluating to be at least as high as a student entering the program I’d think, it could be something which is easily faked and is far less likely to be honest, etc etc.

The idea of having some kind of peer assessment and perspective is pretty appealing and interesting, but I’m not sure that it could work really well and meaningfully for high school seniors, certainly not across the board for many schools.

In fact, while I think it’d be interesting to write letters for my friends now going into graduate school, I’m not even sure I’d have the expectation as an evaluator that college seniors could really do a good job and make the process meaningful, but at least then there is some additional credentialization that allows you to assess who this letter is coming from and also significantly more maturity.