MathPath Online NON-Academic Recommendation Form

If you are a math teacher or math coach
You probably should be completing the ACADEMIC form instead

 

 

Thank you for helping this student apply to MathPath. This form should take you only 10-15 minutes. If you want to write a letter instead of completing this form, you may do so, but it will take longer and it should still cover the sorts of things this form shows we are interested in. If you write a letter, email it as an attachment to smaurer1@swarthmore.edu. Be sure to include the 4-digit code the student gave you.

MathPath is technically not a school, and thus the US FERPA laws do not apply. This means that we are allowed to keep your recommendation confidential, and fully intend to, even though the student has signed no waiver.

After you fill in any box, don't hit Return to go to the next box. On some browsers this submits your survey.  Rather, use Tab or Point-and-Click.  When you are done, hit Submit at the bottom. 

If your recommendation does get submitted prematurely just start again, filling in your name again, then filling in items starting where you left off last time, and ending with a note in the last comment box saying this is a resubmission. There is no way to save this form halfway through and return to it, so you might want to look over the whole thing before starting to answer.

For the longer optional comment boxes at the end, you may want to cut and paste your answer from another program. Do NOT cut and paste from a full-featured word processor like Word, that uses nonprinting characters; this may cause submission to fail. If you want to cut and paste, do so from a pure text program like NotePad or TextEdit.


Name of Applicant (not your name)

     Surname (family name)    

     Given (First) Name    

4-digit code the applicant gave you to use:    (this helps us verify and link your recommendation to the applicant)

 

Information about you

     Name (first then last)    

 

     How long have you known this applicant? In what capacity?

            

 

    Email address  

    Phone daytime     evening  

                                                                                                       

Your Postal mailing address

Line 1 (usually street address)  

Line 2  

City or Town

State or Province Abbreviation (if in US or Canada)   

Zip or Postal Code  

Country if not US  

         

Below is a list of personal qualities, some good, some bad, that sometimes make a difference at MathPath. For each, click on the appropriate button: Yes (s/he has it), Sometimes, No, you Don't Know. Please know: We are used to having a certain number of quirky kids, and MathPath is generally a very tolerant environment for them, where they thrive. No one answer you give is going to disqualify an applicant, so please give your honest assessment.

Admits mistakes, does not blame others:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Articulate:       

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Big ego; thinks of him/herself as the smartest around:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Careless and forgetful:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Curious, likes to figure things out:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Emotionally mature for his or her age:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Energetic:

         Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Enthusiastic:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Excessively talkative; tries to dominate conversations:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Exercises and eats healthy food:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Flexible:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Gets wild when not well supervised:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Good sense of humor:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Good social skills:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Happy:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Hardworking:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Has tantrums; gets angry, aggressive or destructive:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Insubordinate, ignores instructions:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Intrinsically motivated:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Likes to work with other kids:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Loner (fine with us if s/he is happy that way):

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Manages well away from home:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Positive bonds with family:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Responsible:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Short Attention Span:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Tenacious:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

Unrealistic, thinks s/he can do more than s/he can:

              Yes         Sometimes       No                   Don’t know  

 

To your knowledge, what are the applicant’s strongest interests?

In this final optional box (which can expand to any length) put anything else you want to tell us, either praise or concerns. If you want to write a letter-length answer, best to send it as email as described at the top, because messages in this box lose their formatting.

 

Thank you again for recommending this student. Due to the large number of applications we get, the thank you page you get upon hitting submit will be your acknowledgment. If upon hitting submit you get an error page instead of a thank you page, don't immediately resubmit, but instead email Prof Maurer. Most likely your recommendation was still submitted, but only up to the answer box in which the error occurred. If we have most of your recommendation, you will only have to resubmit a little. (The error was probably the inclusion of a non-ascii character, either because you used cut and paste, or because you used a non-English keyboard.)