Also in many respects, hand-writing isn't all that important anymore. If the student can type well, that'll get them far in life. I also agree with your comment that this seems out of place.

The right thing to do is definitely going to be person-dependent. Imagine that the top 200 position is in an area you would love to live in and you have a significant other who would get a great job there too. Depending on how you valued this sort of thing, the choice might be obvious.

@Olivier, I'm curious, how does your colleague know that he's famous for his referee work? Is it not anonymous?

Thanks for the answer Peter. With respect to Chris' question, I think it also matters on the prestige of the journal. The first time I reviewed this paper it was in a higher-impact journal which specifically asked me to evaluate its impact. This was one of the reasons it wasn't suitable for publication. The new journal is lower-impact and thus if the authors have improved the other aspects of the paper I might think it suitable for publication in this journal.