Were you ever asked to write your own recc?

Would love to get the community's thoughts and experiences (or maybe the experiences of other people they've known who have applied)...

Was it hard to find someone who would write a good (good in the context of MBA application, not good as in generally positive) recommendation - did it ever get to the point where you pretty much had to hold the pen for them? Or the extreme where they just told you to do it yourself and they'd be happy to sign off?

Article from P&Q today.

 

My close friend basically just gave his recommenders some anecdotes to use for the questions on an app with a lot of overlap with other schools, but had them write the answers themselves. It really was a lot of work for his recommenders and he felt kinda guilty for adding a few extra reaches to his application pool.

 
Best Response

Ah I had just read this last night on Linkedin. Never have done this myself, but I think the problem lies in needing/using recommendation letters in the first place. The vast majority of the people I've asked to do recommendation letters from know me on an infrequent basis (student in class they see one hour, three time a week; supervisor at work who comes every other week for evals; ect.). None of these people really KNOW me, but obviously the recommendation letters have been good enough for my needs. While I can understand the thought that writing your recommendation letter yourself may be "dishonest" intellectually, realistically a recommendation letter (to me) carries no more weight than a recommendation on linkedin. It's more of a "I'm putting my reputation on the line on this person's character" rather than actual endorsement of the person's skills. Considering most recommendation letters don't deviate from the generic (great person to work with, lots of passion, enthusiasm for the job, ect.), they seem less than useful in this highly competitive, network driven employment environment. So unless you're getting a letter from the former CEO of Goldman Sachs or a former US president/senator, I don't think a recommendation letter is going to have that much impact, and thus worrying about whether the one recommending actually wrote the letter or not seems like a waste of time.

 
crackjack:

None of these people really KNOW me, but obviously the recommendation letters have been good enough for my needs.

That's a really good point. Because all of the other students have the same caliber recommendations as you do, I don't feel like they count as much.

 

It's not uncommon for recommenders to ask you to write your own rec. I'm willing to guess that most recommendation letters that come into MBA programs are written by the student, checked briefly and then signed by the recommender. At the end of the day, these all say the same thing - "John Doe was really hard working and an outside the box thinker, especially when it came to X task."

The way to avoid being generic - whether you write the rec or the recommender writes it - is to have an open dialogue before the letter is written. When I applied, I sat down with my recommenders to go over my story and the traits I was trying to highlight in my overall candidacy. The recommenders then offered up some examples that they saw that would make my case. Even when I wrote the first draft of the letter, they would make edits to go deeper on the content and add their personal style. Admissions committees can differentiate between a generic recommendation and a truly personal one. Obviously, the personal one requires more time on the recommender's part, but if you can get someone to do that, it is helpful.

 

I asked 4 people overall (for 5 schools). I gave them a package with all the questions, my CV, and detailed bullet points of all the things I worked on and even some of the feedback I had during my informal reviews from them (I think this reminded them of feedback they gave me). I also gave copies of the essays to those who asked. I think one other piece of advice is if applying to bschool is to make sure to let your recommenders know how small the applications have become and that I really needed them to write very concrete examples to let the Admissions Committee get to know me.

 
ElRusoAdomaitis:

I asked 4 people overall (for 5 schools). I gave them a package with all the questions, my CV, and detailed bullet points of all the things I worked on and even some of the feedback I had during my informal reviews from them (I think this reminded them of feedback they gave me). I also gave copies of the essays to those who asked. I think one other piece of advice is if applying to bschool is to make sure to let your recommenders know how small the applications have become and that I really needed them to write very concrete examples to let the Admissions Committee get to know me.

My MBA rec from my boss was done by myself and it pissed me off. I just wrote 2000 words about myself to get into this school. Im tapped out. Im asking you to help me out because I've worked hard for you and you claimed to care about my career. I was insulted that my boss thought he was doing me a favor. I thought he was being lazy.

 
NYU:
ElRusoAdomaitis:

I asked 4 people overall (for 5 schools). I gave them a package with all the questions, my CV, and detailed bullet points of all the things I worked on and even some of the feedback I had during my informal reviews from them (I think this reminded them of feedback they gave me). I also gave copies of the essays to those who asked. I think one other piece of advice is if applying to bschool is to make sure to let your recommenders know how small the applications have become and that I really needed them to write very concrete examples to let the Admissions Committee get to know me.

My MBA rec from my boss was done by myself and it pissed me off. I just wrote 2000 words about myself to get into this school. Im tapped out. Im asking you to help me out because I've worked hard for you and you claimed to care about my career. I was insulted that my boss thought he was doing me a favor. I thought he was being lazy.

Fair enough, but it does let you craft the recommendation so it fits exactly within the overall story you're trying to convey. I would love it if all of my recommenders just let me write my recs.

Hi, Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you.
 

Wrote every single one of my recs.

One of my rec writers asked that I write up the full letter, and he would just edit/add personal style where he saw fit.

The other just put together an outline/highlights of the letter (based on the school's questions) and I just went through and filled in the lines.

 
Otter.:
NYU:
ElRusoAdomaitis:

I asked 4 people overall (for 5 schools). I gave them a package with all the questions, my CV, and detailed bullet points of all the things I worked on and even some of the feedback I had during my informal reviews from them (I think this reminded them of feedback they gave me). I also gave copies of the essays to those who asked. I think one other piece of advice is if applying to bschool is to make sure to let your recommenders know how small the applications have become and that I really needed them to write very concrete examples to let the Admissions Committee get to know me.

My MBA rec from my boss was done by myself and it pissed me off. I just wrote 2000 words about myself to get into this school. Im tapped out. Im asking you to help me out because I've worked hard for you and you claimed to care about my career. I was insulted that my boss thought he was doing me a favor. I thought he was being lazy.

Fair enough, but it does let you craft the recommendation so it fits exactly within the overall story you're trying to convey. I would love it if all of my recommenders just let me write my recs.

I think is harder for two reasons

  1. You are likely to undersell yourself as to not sound pompous or pissed someone off
  2. You have to be very careful to sound like a different writer for each rec, which is harder than it sounds
 

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