Every MBA aspirant dream of getting admission into the best B-school possible. So, what exactly is required to get a seat in a prestigious B-school such as Harvard, Wharton, INSEAD, Stanford, ISB or NUS? Admissions committees take into consideration GMAT score, past-academic record, work experience, essays, recommendation letters and interview while evaluating prospective applicants.
Why are letters of recommendation important?
All business schools want you to submit two or three recommendation letters from people who have taught you or supervised you. This gives B-schools a third-party opinion about the applicant. Nowadays, most B-schools require letters of recommendation to be submitted online. The applicant gives email ids of the recommenders in the online application form of the B-school. The university application system then sends an email to the recommender. This email usually contains a URL and access code, using which the recommender submits the letter of recommendation.
Choice of recommender: Who is the right recommender for me?
The first thing will be to select your recommender very carefully. While selecting recommenders, it is important to choose people who can comment on different aspects of your profile. Therefore, while one recommender highlights your professional career, another could talk about your strong academic or extracurricular achievements. Very often, applicants take one letter from one supervisor and the second, from the supervisor’s supervisor. This is a sheer waste of a letter of recommendation. Similarly, taking a letter of recommendation from one’s current supervisor and the second from an ex-supervisor also shows a poor choice of referees. Ideally, one should choose recommenders from his college and workplace—a professor who can highlight your learning potential, a colleague or client who can put in a few good words about your crisis management or client-servicing skills and of course, your supervisor who can expound on your efficiency, out-of-box thinking, team dynamics, etc.
Content and storyline: What points must be covered?
The second thing is to have your recommender spend time on your recommendation and add original inputs. Most B-schools require letters of recommendation in a Question & Answer format. This makes it easier for the recommenders to write the letter. Some of the common questions that B-schools ask of recommenders are:
1. For how long and in what capacity have you known the applicant?
2. What are the salient strengths of the applicant?
3. What are the areas for improvement of the applicant?
4. How would you rate the applicant in comparison to his peer group?
While answering these questions, it is very important to give relevant examples to highlight the winning traits of the applicant and to differentiate the applicant from his peer group. Even weaknesses or areas of improvement need to be delivered as constructive criticism.
Turnaround time: How to get a speedier response
It’s a serious matter! Drive home this point to your recommender. For your letters of recommendation, you will be depending on someone other than yourself. There is a high probability that that person might not take your application process as seriously as you do. They may even be quite busy and genuinely short on time. So, choose your recommenders wisely. They should be serious about submitting the letter of recommendation on time. You would not want to miss out on a B-school deadline just because the recommender failed to submit the letter of recommendation before the deadline of the university.
