December 3, 2008

Are Your References Too Fawning?

By DAVID D. PERLMUTTER

Praise in a letter of recommendation has more impact when it is honest, detailed, balanced, and on point

In my first year on the tenure track, I applied for a grant and asked a senior professor for a recommendation. He politely declined, saying, in effect, "I don't know you well enough to make you sound like a genius." He felt that the letters of support for grants regularly laid on the praise so thick that to compete, his had to reach heights of queasiness.

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