Is ever answering "No Basis for Judgement" on a reference request a red-flag I am filling out a reference form for a student I supervised on a medium sized project who is applying for graduate studies.
The student is great, of all that I have supervised in this way they are significantly the best on a number of metrics.
They are also the only student who has ever applied for graduate studies.
It has a bunch of questions where i am ask to rate them on there e.g. analytical ability.
One of the questions on the form is:
&quot;Rank relative to others you have recommended for PhD studies&quot;
with options like To 1%, top 10% etc.
The last option is &quot;No Basis for Judgement&quot;.
Since they are the only person I have recommended for a PhD program, that seems like the correct answer.
Since I don't have anyone else to compare them to who I have recommended.
But I am wondering if I am I am interpretting it too literally.
and I should actually be answering this question with my total assessment of them (though there is another field for that); or with comparison to people who could have but didn't ask me for a reference; or to the set of people i expect would exist.
Especially I worry that saying &quot;No Basis For Judgement&quot; might be taken as a red-flag by the program administrator.
Usually you can supply context either as comments on the form or as a separate letter.  This is where you can explain you “no basis for judgement”.  It is not uncommon (although maybe so for this specific question): you may simply not have the historical pool of students to make an informed comparison.
You can use comments or a letter to simply restate what you just included in your post, and this should be enough to justify an honest opinion AND provide useful additional information for a committee.