Social work educators have few guidelines to help them evaluate master's of social work applicants with criminal records. This study surveyed 280 field supervisors and asked them to rate their likelihood of rejecting a student with a criminal record depending on crime type and mitigating factors. Results found that supervisors' perception of risk was influenced by the nature of the crime, mitigating factors related to the crime, and, in some crime categories, agency type and personal characteristics of the respondent. Field supervisors' appraisals of risk diverged somewhat from criminological research, which generally uses mitigating factors rather than crime type to evaluate risk of recidivism. (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)