Rethinking Letters of Recommendation: Why? What? Who? How Julie Masterson Kenn Apel Karen Jacobs Associate Provost/Dean of the Graduate College Professor and Chair, CSD Vice President, Client Success Missouri State University University of South Carolina Liaison International Special appearance by Robert Augustine, Senior Vice President Council of Graduate Schools
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Rethinking Letters of Recommendation: Why? What?
Who? How
Julie Masterson Kenn Apel Karen Jacobs
Associate Provost/Dean of the Graduate College Professor and Chair, CSD Vice President, Client Success
Missouri State University University of South Carolina Liaison International
Special appearance by Robert Augustine, Senior Vice PresidentCouncil of Graduate Schools
It must be December…….
Audience Participation
• What value do you put on Letters of Recommendation?
• Critical for making admission decisions
• Somewhat important for making admission decisions
• Minimally important for making admission decisions
• Not worth using
• Maybe they matter, but I hate writing them so much that I don’t care
“If letters were a new psychological test, they would not come close to meeting minimum profession criteria (i.e., Standards) for use in
decision-making”.
Brihl & Wasieleseski, 2004
Strong FACE Validity
• LOR shown to be most heavily weighted non-objective (second order) criteria. Of 248 masters programs, 62.5% report that LOR are very important criteria in admission decisions, 28.5% report “somewhat important”, 6.3% report minimal importance and 1.2% do not use LOR (Briihl & Wasieleski, 2004)
• Individuals who have had direct, relevant contact with the applicant should be in best position to provide a holistic evaluation.
Concurrent Validity
• Correlations with standardized test scores: verbal ability (.14) & quantitative ability (.08) (Kuncel et al., 2014)
• Correlations with prior grades (.26), personal statements (.41) and interviews (.18) (Kuncel et al., 2014)
• Addition of LOR increased R2 .01 for faculty ratings of student performance in medical school (R2=.128 to R2=.139) (Kuncel et al., 2014)
Predictive Validity• Kuncel et al. (2014): Addition of LOR increased R2
• .003 for Grad GPA (R2=.112 to R2=.115)
• .24 degree attainment, increase was much larger (R2=.031 to R2=.055)
• Letters of recommendation did not add incremental validity to the combo of GRE scores and undergrad GPA (Aamodt, 2012)
• The Problem: Lack of Evidence: Admission – Matriculation – Completion – Careers
• The Starting Point: Admissions Survey: Program Directors & University Leaders
• The Method: Identify Current & Needed Admission Attributes + Evidence + Value
• The Outcome: Evidence Based Admissions Practices
• The Future: Admissions Evidence to Support Matriculation – Completion – Careers
Why (doesn’t the LOR have higher predictive validity)?• Degree attainment is difficult to predict
• Predictive power of LOR was better/equal to all other traditional predictors but standardized tests of field specific knowledge (i.e., GRE subject test).
• Few references are negative. For example, in two of the studies less than 7% of letters rated applicants as being average or below average
• Reference providers may also avoid giving low ratings or include negative ratings out of fear that the applicant will be angry or file a defamation lawsuit.
• Superficially positive in tone; applicants choose letter writers and are motivated to avoid selecting an individual who might give them a negative reference.
• Low inter-rater reliability between evaluators for the same applicant
• .22 (Baxter et al., 1981) and .40 (Kuncel et al., 2014)
• More agreement between recommendations written by the same person for two different applicants.
• Two reference providers may see applicants in very different situations
Why (continued)?
• Letters may say more about the person writing the letter than the subject of the recommendation
• Letter readers tend to favor letters written by people they know. CGS/ETS study indicates that these are not subtle biases, but rather somewhat blatant!
• Bias extends to the institution with LORs from faculty at Big Name University preferred over Directional School because of differences in perceived grade inflation, which is not supported by evidence.
• LORs are interpreted by admissions committees and combined judgments may decrease effectiveness.
Structured LORs from Other Disciplines• SLOEs – Standard Letter of Evaluation
• Provides a global perspective on an applicant’s candidacy for training by providing meaningful comparisons to peers applying for training in emergency medicine
• Provides comparative data to peers in addition to important information regarding the distinguishing non-cognitive characteristics (e.g. maturity, professionalism, leadership, compassion, initiative, enthusiasm) that an applicant possesses
• Summary of letters written by a group of evaluators
• May also include an interview of the student
• PI – Personality Inventory
• Any of several tests that attempt to characterize the personality of an individual by objective scoring of replies to a large number of questions concerning his or her own behavior