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Stanford GSB 2005
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MBA Recommendation Letter
MBA Recommendation Letters

Learn more about MBA Recommendation and get admitted to the school of your dreams.

When soliciting MBA Recommendation Letters, the last thing you would want is to be asked to just draft the letter yourself for your chosen recommender to sign. While some people resort to this, it is generally not advisable practice. The problem with it is that the letter might lose some of the authenticity that it would have if it were really written by your recommender. Just the tone or voice of the letter itself might give you away.

The only way you can avoid having to do this is by helping out your recommender to formulate his or her own thoughts for the letter, while focusing them on your ultimate goal of making a favorable impression on the school's admissions committee. Here are a few things you should provide your recommender:

Clear guidelines or expectations for the MBA Recommendation Letters

The first thing to do when approaching people to write your MBA recommendations is to clarify what expectations the school has and what kind of MBA Recommendation Letters can help you make the cut. It is also best to mention all deadlines at this point, as well as any other paperwork they need to accomplish for the school. This way, they can plan ahead and decide what they can commit - at the same time giving you an idea how willing your chosen recommender is to give it the time and effort.

Enough time to write

Notifying people at least two months in advance is ideal, although it would not be impossible to solicit recommendations within a month. However, it is safer to assume that people are busy most of the time and cannot possibly turn out a good MBA Recommendation Letters in a few short days. The more time they have to think about what to write and how to write it, the higher your chances are of getting great letters of recommendation. Time to revise can make a big difference, too.

Relevant documents

Provide your recommenders with a copy of your application documents like your resume and personal essay so that they will know what their recommendation needs to support. The information in these documents, particularly those pertaining to your professional traits and achievements, could help them remember specifics about your work and your character, which they can, in turn, mention.

Examples of your good work

Speaking of your achievements and qualities, it is important to remind your recommender to avoid making general or vague comments about them. A recommendation letter without specifics is not very useful for something as competitive as business school application. You can help by citing instances when you have shown such qualities as leadership, creativity and efficiency, or the other traits that the school wants. Details like these can make a MBA recommendation more solid and credible.

Helpful tips

There are other useful tips you can give that can guarantee you effective business school recommendations. One is to remind your recommenders to explain how well they know you, in order to establish credibility. Next is to discuss several of your positive traits and to quantify them in comparison to your peers, which helps make the recommendation less generic. Another advice you can give is for them to sum up their letters with a statement about your potential in business, which will validate why you should be accepted for the MBA program.

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MBA Recommendation LetterMBA Recommendation Letters

MBA Recommendation Letter
MBA Recommendation Letters