Word Limit on Letters of Recommendation?

[ricecracker]

Hi All,

I know the answer varies from school to school, and I've tried some searching but haven't been able to find a solid answer for most of the schools I'm looking at. As the title suggests, I want to know if there is a word limit on letters of recommendation. If not, what would be an appropriate length? For example, I saw on Wharton's site that 2-4 pages is perfectly acceptable. Is this ok for most schools? I want to know so I can avoid coaching them into a recommendation that is too short/long.

Specifically, if anybody knows whether or not there is a word limit for any of the schools below, that would be extremely helpful if you could clue me in:

Booth
Kellogg
Ross
Andersen
Kelley

Any insight for any of these schools would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance!

[Jon@Admissionado]

Each school has it's own word/character limits, which your recommender will see when they log on. Sometimes these are just suggestions, and sometimes (esp. in the case of character limits) their answer will be simply get cut off if they try to go beyond the limit. Many also have NO word limits at all, in which case, one relatively long recommendation of 4-6 pages is recommended, and one more "normal" size like you suggested,

[Sheriff]

Maybe you can take Harvard's 250 word limit as a general reference.

[PrepMBA.AlexLeventhal]

Jon has given you solid advice. I will only add that these adcom folks read so many of these that a great letter can be executed in 2-3 pages. I have rarely seen a 4-6 page letter where the specifics justify the page count. After 8 seasons coaching clients, I believe less is more, as these readers start to glaze over if the letter is wordy and repetitive. Of course, there are always great exceptions.

[ricecracker]

Thanks a lot for your feedback everyone. It seems that unless there's a hard word count limit, I'll try to coach my recommenders into a hopefully dense 2 to 3 pages for the recommendation.

Thanks again for the input, as always, I'm very grateful for all the help available here on BTG.

[PrepMBA.AlexLeventhal]

My pleasure. Good luck!