ADEA PASS Professional Evaluation Form Guide

ADEA PASS Professional Evaluation Form Guide

The ADEA PASS Professional Evaluation Form asks you to rate ten attributes as Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, Does Not Meet Expectations or Not Observed, with remarks on each, plus an optional overall recommendation. For the 2026–2027 cycle, evaluators can submit until February 18, 2027 at 11:59 PM ET.

Our view: three working ratings and a Not Observed box give a program little to separate one strong dental student from another. Your remarks are where the difference shows. A column of "Exceeds Expectations" with empty or one-word remarks tells the program that you liked the applicant and nothing else.

The ADEA PASS help pages quoted below were checked on November 7, 2026. The applicant's own document is covered in the ADEA PASS personal statement guide.

The form: ten attributes, four ratings

The help page says the form "requires evaluators to comment on ten attributes (integrity, professional demeanor, clinical skills, reaction to criticism, didactic knowledge, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, organizational skills, self-awareness, and maturity)." It continues: "Evaluators rate each attribute as Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, Does Not Meet Expectations, or Not Observed along with remarks about those attributes. Additionally, evaluators can provide an overall recommendation on your behalf."

The middle column is our guide, not ADEA's. ADEA lists the attributes and ratings only.

What else the PASS file holds:

• Three to five of these forms. Applicants "are required to request at least 3 and may request a maximum of 5 evaluations." More go "directly to your programs."
• A separate dean's evaluation. The Institution Evaluation Form, "also known as the Dean's Letter", is completed "by the dental school Dean or their designated representative" and summarizes "grades, class rank (if applicable), professionalism and ethical behavior, and other relevant remarks" (Institution Evaluation help page). You do not need to restate class rank; the dean's form carries it.
• The request email comes from support@adeapass.myliaison.com, with a link to Liaison Letters.
• Only you can submit. Evaluations "are submitted by the evaluators themselves; they cannot be completed or submitted by the applicant or another party on behalf of the evaluator."

The PASS help page does not mention a letter upload. The general Liaison Letters guide says a form may include one uploaded document "Depending on the program(s) the applicant is applying to". If your request shows an upload field, it holds one PDF, Word, Rich Text or plain-text file with a name under 95 characters.

Using Not Observed honestly

Not Observed is one of the four published choices. It is a rating, not a gap in the form. Use it when you have no evidence, and say why in the remark, for example: Didactic only; I taught this student in a 90-person pharmacology course. That tells the program your other ratings come from somewhere real.

The countercase: if you mark Not Observed on most of the ten, you are the wrong evaluator for this applicant. Tell them now: PASS stops taking new evaluation requests on February 12, 2027 at 11:59 PM ET, six days before the evaluator cutoff. Our guide to "no basis for judgment" ratings covers the same choice on graduate forms.

Two checks before you submit:

1. Every Exceeds Expectations has a remark with an incident. If you cannot write one, the rating is Meets Expectations.
2. Any Does Not Meet Expectations has a fair remark. Say what you saw and, if it changed, what changed.

Remarks that differentiate: constructed examples

Constructed examples, written by us, not real evaluators' remarks. Each pair shows a weak remark and a revised one for the same rating.

Clinical skills: Exceeds Expectations

Weak: Excellent hands. Top of the class.

Revised: I supervised 22 of her restorative appointments in D3 clinic. On a Class II composite with subgingival margins she placed a matrix and wedge I would have chosen, checked the contact twice, and asked me to look before curing. Her preparations needed no correction from me after October.

Reaction to criticism: Meets Expectations

Weak: Takes feedback well.

Revised: After I told him his first case presentation skipped the medical history review, he came back the next week with a checklist he had written and used it in the next three presentations I saw.

Self-awareness: Exceeds Expectations

Weak: Very self-aware and mature.

Revised: When a crown she prepared failed to seat, she brought the die to me before the patient's appointment, named the margin she had over-reduced, and asked to redo it. She logged the remake herself.

Each revised remark names the setting, the applicant's own action and what you saw. The first gives a count (22 appointments) and a time marker (after October), so a program can tell how much your rating rests on.

Before you submit

1. Rate all ten attributes, using Not Observed where you saw nothing.
2. Write a remark for each rating, with an incident for every Exceeds Expectations.
3. Give the overall recommendation if the form offers it, at the level your remarks support.
4. Submit before the programs' deadlines and no later than February 18, 2027 at 11:59 PM ET (PASS cycle dates). PASS notes that "the individual program's deadline may differ from the application's cycle dates."
5. Tell the applicant you submitted. PASS says "We will not notify applicants about missing Professional Evaluations."

If you also wrote this student's dental school letter years ago, the dentist letter of recommendation guide shows the narrative form of the same evidence. Programs in the dental residency match may also receive the applicant's letters of intent; the dental residency letter of intent guide covers the rules on those. Pharmacy residency references work differently; see PhORCAS references for preceptors.

Get a free review of the letter

Get a free Quick Review of your recommendation letter against GradPilot's general health professions evaluation letter rubric. Paste your remarks, or your uploaded letter, and it reads whether your relationship to the applicant is clear, whether each quality you claim rests on an incident you saw, whether your comparisons have a basis, and whether your recommendation follows from what you wrote. Writing for a medical residency applicant through ERAS instead? Use the residency letter of recommendation rubric.

The applicant's statement has its own review on the dental residency personal statement review page. More dental and residency guides are in the medical school essays hub.

Sources

Retrieved November 7, 2026.

• ADEA PASS Applicant Help Center, Professional Evaluation Form (no cycle stated): the ten attributes, four ratings, remarks, overall recommendation, 3 to 5 forms, request email, evaluator-only submission, no applicant notification.
• ADEA PASS Applicant Help Center, Institution Evaluation: the Dean's Letter and what it summarizes.
• ADEA PASS Applicant Help Center, Application Cycle Dates (cycle opened May 13, 2026): February 12, 2027 last date to request evaluations; February 18, 2027 evaluator cutoff; program deadlines may differ.
• Liaison Letters Help Center, Complete a Recommendation: optional upload, accepted file types, file-name limit.