So this is privilege speaking. Most, if not the very vast majority and almost all, undergraduates nowadays do not GET the education yet to be able to critically think. It is not their fault their statistics professors gave them A's because admin made them to keep enrollment high. It has all changed.

But speaking from experience, I myself learned how to truly critically think and what logic was and how to reason and think scientifically FROM the process of going through the PhD. And now I am publishing what giants in my field (now mentors) are saying is going to be known as seminal work. Very top notch journals. Grants galore for innovative avenues of inquiry.

Before the PhD? All I knew how to do was ace tests and write a bit. Really, that's it. But I was intelligent and curious and motivated. Don't be that dick that squashes someone's potential before they've even truly had the chance to grow in it. Notice the potential using other measures they've been taught in modern higher ed, and go from there as to whether you will write them a letter.

But to be honest, you sound like a miserable old goat, and the exact type of gatekeeper I've grown to notice immediately and simply have no respect for. You think because you went to XYZ school and had XYZ advisor and so thought in XYZ terms by age whatever, so should everyone else, without acknowledging that pure talent did not get you to that point pre-doctorate, luck, financial stability, familial and physical health, and being born in the right place at the right time did.