Recommenders

[sunman]

Hi all,

I'm gunning for six schools in Round 1 - HBS, Kellogg, Fuqua, Booth, Ross, and Darden respectively. That's 13 recommendation letters that I need to furnish. My recommenders are all here deployed with me in Afghanistan, and they work 100+ hour work weeks. They are supportive of my ambitions and willing to write enthusiastic recommendations, but I don't want to overload any one person, especially my immediate supervisor.

I'm sure some of you have been in a similar position when you applied. How did you tackle that obstacle?

[Jon@Admissionado]

Gunning away sonny! I like it.

Okay the thing is they WILL have to upload the recommendations themselves (or have a secretary do it). There is no way around that, really. But one thing you CAN do to make things easier for them, is either assemble for them, or have them assemble ALL of the recommendation questions in one doc before they start answering them. Cause 80% of all recommendations will be the same, so there's no point in redoing everything from the start. And if you have one doc which cover ALL the Qs there are, then it will make things faster. They will still need to take time and put in effort (and hopefully you are choosing folks who will be happy to do so!)... But this little trick should save thema bit of a bother.

[PrepMBA.AlexLeventhal]

Jon is right that your pre work can save them some time, but the truth is that there is no good work around here. And this is a shame, as your bosses are super busy. There should be a universal rec form given that 80-90% of the questions for all the schools are always the same in spirit, though different in wording and word limit. The b schools will hopefully address this, as they are just encouraging bosses to bow out and ask you to draft the modifications.

But use your best rec writers for your top choices of course, and perhaps ask others to fill in lower down the ranks.

Good Luck!

[Erlendsen]

Another good tip is to inform the recommenders as soon as possible, and say that you would like to make the workload as minimal as possible for them, but that will demand a continuous dialog over a certain time span.

They are more than willing to help, but if you show them respect for both their time and for their recommendation, they will be delighted with helping you. Best of luck, and be sure to give us feedback!

[money9111]

I'm also wondering if you could ask each school to send you what the interview questions are in a pdf or something. Definitely first start off by telling them your circumstance. (not sure if they'd do this). I know for my recommenders, they had to log into the system themselves before they were prompted with the questions as they were filling them out. If you could get a list of the questions and then compile them - and then speak with your recommenders about examples and things, that may be helpful.

I know when I did it, I sat with my VP and my Manager and we talked through examples for each question and they jotted down topics or projects that they would write about. My manager had never written a recommendation before and said that me doing that was incredibly helpful for her.



*Army brat here - both of my parents were in the military.

[sunman]

I just go up to my recommenders and say: "Hey sir, do you mind sending me the recommendation questions by email so I can type up some talking point that I'd like you to address?"

They're usually happy to oblige.