In the December 2014 AMS Notices, a letter to the editor (http://www.ams.org/notices/201411/rnoti-p1311.pdf) by Deconinck and Medlock addresses the problem of (math) graduate programs requiring letter writers to fill out questionnaires about applicants or do other tasks besides uploading a recommendation letter, unlike the quick process for job applications on Mathjobs where all a letter writer has to do is upload a letter (once). Deconinck and Medlock suggest that letter writers to graduate programs append a postscript to their recommendation letters urging faculty who read the letter to check how their own graduate program handles applications and get the process streamlined if it has any requirements like the despised questionnaires.
Many faculty may not know what their own school makes letter writers do (esp. if they have not served on the graduate admissions committee). In that spirit, I propose that we collect here on MO a list of schools that make letter writers fill out questionnaires, as a kind of public service to encourage any faculty who see their own school listed here to go to their graduate school administration and insist that the math graduate program applicants — if not all graduate school applicants — avoid having any kind of survey as part of the application that letter writers have to fill out. If, in the future, a graduate program kills off the required questionnaire, the answer listing that school could be updated to make clear its passage from the dark side to the light side, so to speak.
Of course the admission websites are designed for an entire graduate school, not just a math department, but math faculty could still tell their graduate school that they make no use of questionnaires, percentage rankings, etc. from the online form, so it is a waste of time and therefore they do not want to make letter writers for the math graduate program see any of that stuff.
If you are writing graduate program recommendation letters this year and think this question is worthwhile, please keep a record of which graduate programs make you fill out questionnaires or do anything else besides upload a letter so that you can come back here and make a record of it if nobody else has yet.
Post one school per answer, ideally with the school name first for ease of scanning, and describe what letter writers are asked to do besides upload a letter.
(There are also some praise-worthy graduate programs where the letter writer has to do essentially nothing besides upload a letter, e.g., UIC and Wisconsin have no questionnaire, and Univ. Southern California only posts a questionnaire at the very end and makes it clear that filling it is not a requirement. Perhaps there should be a separate MO community wiki list for those schools.)
Best Answer
Georgia Tech
It asks letter writers to fill out a questionnaire about the applicant, including asking how the applicant works as part of a team.