Reference letter

[GameSlinger]

I don't know your experience with applying to fellowships, post-doc roles or grad school, but letters purely based on a student writing good papers, doing quality powerpoints or scoring well on tests aren't always going to cut it. At least not in my line of work. These academic accolades are already expected of all the applicants (and reflected in one's GPA)  and partially why I feel some aspects of LORs are archaic (the check the box types). That doesn't mean they don't have some sort of role in academia though.

This is pretty much what I was referring to. There is a big difference between a LOR that says "this person completed all the assigned tasks and scored 92% in to class", and one that talks about how good their interpersonal skills are dealing with students and instructors, that when they wanted to go volunteer at a non-profit they were asking for permission to adjust assignment dates in advance, and that they always went above and beyond with their assignments. These types of LOR are the ones the competitive application reviewers are looking for. If they were only wanting the first example, that is pretty much covered by the school transcript.

An A+ student doesn't mean they will be able to deal with people in real life. This is why Med Schools are always looking for volunteer hours, job shadowing history, extra curricular activities, etc. They want to make sure the people the are admitting are well rounded and therefore be more likely to be successful in the real world, not just in school.