It’s grad school application time, which means writing recommendation letters for our students. In the past, I’ve struggled to find a formula that works well for different students and situation. Of course, it depends on how well I know the student and how strongly I can recommend them*. Something that has worked well for me is to ask students to give me background info on themselves and the opportunity to which they are applying. I used to ask for this in the form of a resume and personal statement, but decided it might be easier/less intimidating for them to simply answer some questions in a survey.