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 support@aapi.myliaison.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.
Effective with the 2025 application cycle, letter writers will no longer need to manually initiate the "Re-use" feature. Once a referee completes a single Standardized Reference Form (SRF) for a student, that form will automatically be forwarded to any site where the student identifies them as a letter writer.
This change streamlines the process and supports the use of a universal SRF across all applications, as strongly encouraged by APPIC.
However, this also means that referees will not be able to tailor letters for individual sites unless the student uses a different email address when designating that referee. Using a different email creates a separate letter-writing portal.
In past cycles, referees had the option to opt in to the "Re-use" feature by checking a box. Going forward, this step is no longer necessary. The system will default to reusing the SRF unless the student initiates an alternative setup. If, in rare cases, a referee prefers to tailor a letter to a specific site while still using a general letter for others, this can only be done by creating a separate referee profile with a different email address.