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Good tips from Accepted to Colleges: Almost all business schools require 3 or more letters of recommendation in your application packet. These can be the scariest aspect of your application because you have little control over what your recommenders are going to say. Further, narrowing down the entirety of your personal interactions to two or three individuals who could recommend you to college seems a daunting process. Fortunately, there are six simple rules you should follow in order to maximize the positive impact of your letters.
Intelligently selecting a person who will recommend you is the first step in receiving a quality letter of recommendation. Those who are aware of recent work or accomplishments in and out of the classroom tend to be the best letter writers. While it may be tempting to ask a high-ranking or well-respected community member — such as a councilperson, judge, or other political figure — to write a letter, resist this temptation unless the person you are asking knows you personally very well. Consider the following in selecting your recommender:
A teacher, coach, counselor, advisor, or other school leader who has worked closely with you always makes a good recommender. You want to ask someone with insight into not only your recent accomplishments, but also your future potential. Even though it seems like a recognizable name signed at the bottom of a letter will help your chances, remember that the admissions committee is less interested in who writes your letter than what that person actually has to say. A close relationship with your recommender ensures that your letter will be unique, personalized, and impactful.
You don’t have to wait until you start applying for college before requesting a letter of recommendation. If you are still a freshman or sophomore, you can ask a recommender to write you a letter now before he or she begins to forget all of the individual skills and abilities you possess. You can always hang on to a letter for a while before ultimately sending it in. Also remember that if your due date is creeping up and you have yet to ask recommenders for letters, do it immediately. The longer a recommender has to write his or her letter, the higher quality and more polished it will be. Your school work suffers when you try to write an entire essay in one sitting, and the same is true for recommenders. Ask them well in advance so that they have plenty of time to get the work done.
It is not enough to simply ask your letter-writer to recommend you; you must also give them some direction. Talk with them about your goals, dreams, and plans for MBA study. Remember that your application packet is going to be viewed in its entirety. Letters of recommendation that tell a coherent story along with the rest of your materials are always stronger than those that seem random or disjointed. To enhance this consistency, talk with your recommender about what specifically you would like him or her to write about. A letter from someone who you mentioned in your personal statement and who talks about the same experiences you discussed, for instance, is a great way to tell a unified story.
Your letter-writer already knows who you are, but they may not have the benefit of knowing you all around. You will want some recommenders to write about specific experiences that you have had with them, but you may also want some who comment on your experiences as a whole. For these letter-writers, provide them with an outline of your experiences and accomplishments. The resume you use for your application packet is a great resource for these writers who can focus their topics on your personal achievements. Remember: a letter that comments on you using specifics is always better than a generic one.
When you ask your recommender for a letter, always come prepared with the documents he or she needs to fill out. Sometimes colleges will provide a checklist for the recommender to know what he or she should address. These forms frequently include a box meant for you to indicate if you waive rights to access the contents of the letter. Ensure that you check this box. Your letter writer will be able to write a more honest, informative letter if he or she is not worried that you will be proofreading the comments. Remember that no letter-writer will intentionally write bad things about you, so there is no reason for you to check their letter after they write it.
Make sure to provide the deadline for your letter . Finally, a pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelope is always a nice touch and ensures that your recommender will not accidentally send the letter to the wrong place. Doing all of this research in advance will allow your recommender to focus on saying good things about you rather than trying to figure out the administrative requirements themselves.
Depending on how many letters your college accepts, ensure that you tell your entire story with them. For instance, if your college requests three letters, do not simply ask three teachers. Instead, ask your science teacher with whom you helped to develop a Freshman syllabus, your baseball coach of three years, and your club advisor who has watched you plan many community service activities. A diverse pool of letter writers tells a much broader story. Remember that the point of letters of recommendation are to get a deeper insight into who you are. Make sure you have a good answer to the question, “what can this person say about me that other letter writers and I have not already said?”
Following these six simple techniques will ensure that you get the best letters of recommendation possible. This part of your application is vitally important and is easy to neglect as you work hard on crafting the parts that you are personally responsible for. But never forget the impact that a well-written letter might have in convincing an admissions officer that you are the right student to fill a seat in their school.
In May 2009, Harvard Business School announced that it will no longer require MBA applicants to submit GMAT scores. Starting with the applications for admission to the Class of 2012, HBS will allow applicants to submit either GMAT scores or GRE scores.
The news makes Harvard the latest in a series of top tier business schools to make the change. In 2006, both Stanford and MIT’s Sloan School of Management permitted the GRE for applicants to their MBA programs. The policy, while common among Executive MBA programs, is still the exception at top-ranked full-time MBA programs, although it’s unclear just how much longer that will be case now that Harvard has made the change.
Harvard’s acceptance of the GRE is a big win for the Educational Testing Service, which administers that test. About 18 months ago, ETS took aim at the lucrative business school market dominated by the GMAT, launching a marketing campaign suggesting that switching to the GRE would result in more applications. The GMAT, which generates about $80 million a year for the Graduate Management Admission Council, is used by more than 4,000 graduate management programs worldwide.
Deirdre Leopold, managing director of admissions and financial aid at HBS, said the GRE was allowed to make the application process easier for applicants considering graduate programs other than the MBA.
Since many HBS applicants are also considering graduate programs besides the MBA, there is now no need for them to take the GMAT if they have already taken the GRE. We believe that both the GMAT and the GRE meet our expectations of what a standardized test can tell us about a candidate’s ability to thrive in our MBA program.
From the test-takers perspective, one big advantage the GRE has over the GMAT is price: the GRE costs just $150, versus $250 for the GMAT. But applicants haven’t exactly been clamoring for a lower-cost alternative to the GMAT. From the schools perspective, the GMAT has a lot of research backing up its claim that it’s a good predictor of success in a graduate management program, whereas the GRE is in uncharted territory.
So will more schools opt for a GMAT-optional approach? ETS is predicting the floodgates will open now that Harvard has taken the plunge. David Payne, an ETS vice president, says the Harvard news, along with a new “noncognitive evaluation” section of the GRE that will be available in July (it measures teamwork, ethics, persistence, and creativity) will convince many other business schools to accept the GRE.
Payne notes that over 220 business schools accept the GRE for MBA applications already, including 5 of the 10 top internationally ranked programs. About 25 new programs signed on in the last month alone, he said. Here’s his take on the impact of the Harvard news:
I think that number [220] will go through the roof over the summer and into the fall. Harvard is going to help us reach that tipping point. Other schools will say, ‘If it’s good enough for Harvard then it’s good enough for our institution.
The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is a standardized, three-part test delivered in English. Th e test was designed to help admissions officers evaluate how suitable individual applicants are for their graduate business and management programs. It measures basic verbal,mathematical, and analytical writing skills that a test taker has developed over a long period of time through education and work.
GMAT scores are used by admissions officers in roughly 1,800 graduate business and management programs worldwide. Schools that require prospective students to submit GMAT scores in the application process are generally interested in admitting the best-qualified applicants for their programs, which means that you may find a more beneficial learning environment at schools that require GMAT scores as part of your application.
Because the GMAT test gauges skills that are important to successful study of business and management at the graduate level, your scores will give you a good indication of how well prepared you are to succeed academically in a graduate management program; how well you do on the test may also help you choose the business schools to which you apply. Furthermore, the percentile table you receive with your scores will tell you how your performance on the test compares to the performance of other test takers, giving you one way to gauge your competition for admission to business school.
By answering questions that have appeared on the GMAT test before, you will gain experience with the types of questions you may see on the test when you take it. As you practice, you will develop confidence in your ability to reason through the test questions. No additional techniques or strategies are needed to do well on the standardized test if you develop a practical familiarity with the abilities it requires. Simply by practicing and understanding the concepts that are assessed on the test, you will learn what you need to know to answer the questions correctly.
Because a computer-adaptive test cannot be presented in paper form, GMATPrep software was created to help you prepare for the test. Th e software is available for download at no charge for those who have created a user profile on www.mba.com. Th e software includes two practice GMAT tests plus additional practice questions, information about the test, and tutorials to help you become familiar with how the GMAT test will appear on the computer screen at the test center.
We recommend that you download the software as you start to prepare for the test. Take at least one practice test to familiarize yourself with the test and to get an idea of how you might score. As your test date approaches, take more GMAT practice tests as possible to determine whether you need to shift your focus to other areas you need to strengthen.
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