Exploring Character through Recommendation Forms: New Ideas for College Admission Leaders

How might recommendation forms be more equitable to students and more useful to colleges?

Recommendation forms, when crafted carefully and used thoughtfully by admission staff, can be crucial tools for understanding applicants’ strengths and challenges. Yet too often recommendations are inflated, inaccurate, platitudinous, or vague, and too often recommendation systems are structured in ways that exacerbate inequities. 

This resource offers ideas for improving the impact of recommendation letters and forms for institutions that utilize their own applications, and for those that use shared application platforms. As relatively novel ideas, these suggestions need further exploration, piloting, and evaluation.

This resource is part of our Character Assessment in College Admission Guide. Read more about the guide →

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What does the full Character Assessment in College Admission guide include?

• Character Assessment in College Admission Guide Overview

• Definitions of Key Character/Non-Cognitive Terms and Skills for Use in Admission

• The Thrivers Study: A Tool for Understanding the Characteristics of Successful Students

• Character Assessment Readiness: An Audit Tool for College Admission Offices

• Sharing Institutional Values: Examples from College Admission Websites

• Examples of Character-Focused Essay Questions in College Admission

• Examples of Language that Articulate the Importance of Family Responsibilities in College Admission

• Exploring Character through Recommendation Forms: New Ideas for College Admission Leaders

• Ideas Worth Testing: Innovation in Character Assessment In College Admission

• Examples of College Admission Character Assessment Tools

• Deans Commitment Letter

• Character Assessment in High Schools: Recommendations for the College Admission Process and Beyond (for high schools)

• Writing Character-Conscious Letters of Recommendation: Tips for High School Counselors and Teachers (for high schools)

We welcome feedback as you engage with this resource and in this meaningful work. If you develop additional tools or wisdom to share, we hope you will tell us, so that we can share widely and better guide others. Please email collegeadmissions@makingcaringcommon.org to connect with our team.