CCTC STANDARDIZED REFERENCE FORM (SRF)
Referees are required to use the Standardized Reference Form (SRF) that was developed by the CCTC (the Council of Chairs of Training Councils). As of July 2022, the SRF format has changed to an online form from a document upload. It is HIGHLY recommended that letter writers prepare their answers in advance so that they can simply cut and paste their answers into the form (see SRF items in pdf above). This will reduce your risk of being timed out of the portal and losing any content you have written if you get unexpectedly pulled away mid-stream. Spaces and punctuation are classified as characters, so please account for that as you write your SRF content with consideration of the character limits for each section.
Once a student has designated a referee in their AAPI, the letter writer will receive an e-mail, entitled, “Applicant Recommendation Request” from AAPIinfo@liaisonedu.com that contains links to instructions and the SRF portal powered by LettersbyLiaison. The AAPI SRF Portal functions best on Edge, Chrome or Firefox browsers.
After referees complete an SRF for a student, they will have the option to click a box to initiate the “Re-use” feature, endorsing the use of their SRF for all future applications. If they do not check that box, each time a student identifies them as a referee for a new site, that recommender will be pinged again to complete a new SRF. APPIC suggests that recommenders generally submit a universal SRF to go to all sites and thus, use the "Re-use" feature. If, in the rare circumstance a referee wants to tailor a particular letter but generally wants to use a universal letter, they can toggle the "re-use" feature on and off.