Superlatives

Chapter 1 thoroughly discusses the issue of how to give praise effectively. Both in the literature and anecdotally, letter readers note that the superlatives used in a recommendation letter can be the most revealing characteristic of all. In particular, adjectives that express the level of quality in a student’s work or character—especially when they are presented with ethos and amidst convincing evidence—demonstrate both your belief in the student and your acumen as an evaluator.

Adapting from a study of 625 reference letters (1), what follows is a short list of some of the superlatives used in those letters, categorized here by function:

What’s especially interesting about this list, which can be used to generate ideas for superlatives when writing letters, is how the adjectives most definitive of work ethic and character (“pace-setting,” “tenacious,” “on-the-ball”) immediately suggest that the evaluator has thoughtfully assessed the student’s talents in context rather than just plugged in a term arbitrarily. One working in a lab where radioactive waste is handled, for example, needs to be “diligent,” “orderly,” and even “fastidious”; one seeking to teach poetry writing needs to be “creative,” “understanding,” and “enthusiastic.”

In this example—a paragraph taken from a sample letter in Chapter 6—we see how superlatives can be used both to leverage the student and to define a field in which the student works:

As Janet dared in English, she has come to dare in her other choices: in her application to and involvement in the Bucknell NSF-REU in physics; in her summer work with the Biomaterials and Bionanotechnology Summer Institute funded by NSF and NIH. A technical and rapidly expanding field such as neurophysics requires students to think out of the box. If ever a student were capable of extraordinary achievement in such a field, Janet is it—precisely because she thinks out of so many boxes simultaneously. Janet’s abilities extend from sophisticated mathematics to the clear articulation of computational problems and solutions; from high-level physics to the demonstration of concepts; from the smallest detail (or molecule, as she might say) to the biggest picture (or, the cosmos).

Of course, one needs to practice restraint when praising a student’s abilities as well. As one group of authors from a recent study on recommendation letters noted: “A member of my department once expressed to me his frustration that the prevalence of superlatives made it impossible to make anyone believe how good a certain student of ours actually was” (2). By sheer volume or the whiff of exaggeration, superlatives applied to a student’s accomplishments, especially without contextual evidence to back them up, might simply cloud judgment. Encomium heaped too generously only invites doubt.