I started working on the list that Davidson gives for its peer review page. My best advice is to look carefully at the letters we read this term. Some of the qualities valued on the peer review page don’t translate easily or well. They will be almost always better expressed by verbal phrasing than just a list of nouns and adjectives.
Character and Personality
The following ratings will be used to compare this student with other very capable students. Please make them as realistic as you can in comparison with outstanding students applying to other leading institutions.
Leadership: I think this is getting at the respect accrued to someone because they seem to know what they are doing–not really just someone who pushes to the front to take charge, but someone whom others don’t mind taking charge.
- consilium capere posse Latinitium
- gratia: favor one finds with others (a word that is important and has a lot of senses)
Self-confidence: “a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment”; syn: morale, confidence, self-assurance, assurance, assertiveness, self-reliance, self-possession, composure.
- to have c., fīdo, confīdo, fīsus sum, 3 intransitive
- fiducia sui, self-confidence, boldness, courage PHI
- bonum animum habere (courage)
- praesenti animo uti –to possess presence of mind.
Independence: not depending on another; capable of thinking and acting for oneself;
- legally: sui iuris esse; liber, libera, liberum
- personally: suo consilio uti; suo iudicio uti– to go one’s own way, proceed independently
- suo more vivere (this seems not really a compliment)
Character and Integrity
- note: integritas, integritatisdoes not mean “integrity” in our sense but rather wholeness “the undiminished or unimpaired condition of a thing.” I think integrity here means “honesty, respectablity”
- honestus, a,um : respectable
- opinionem virtutis habere – to have the reputation of virtue.
- mores
- poetic: integer vitae scelerisque purus (Horace)
Reaction to criticism: this has to be done with a verb phrase
- how you take something: ferre + adverb
- bene merens (merens, merentis) or bene meritus/ merita de + ablative of person
- benevolens, benevolentis
- consulere
- cura; curare
- humanitas; humanus, a, um
- benignus
Respect accorded by classmates: this one is easy (but don’t use “habere”! use fruor, frui, fructum or utor, uti usum or something –both take ablative)
- honor
- dignitas
- optima fides et fama
- honestus, a,um: regarded with honor
- dignus, a, um (+ablative of respect)
