Hi all,
Background:
I’m applying for various Mfins in Europe at the end of this month. I have the stats to get into some of the best programmes (Undergrad, WE, ECs, etc).
Problem:
My original referee who previously agreed to be my referee can no longer do my references until mid November due to personal reasons. I have emailed another person I have worked with, and it turns out that my company has a dumb policy that all references have to go through HR, and I can only get a standard employee reference (XX has worked here from YY till YY and held a position of ZZ), as confirmed by HR this morning. This is by all means not a character reference at all and is pretty much useless for an admissions committee. Why this policy is in place I don’t know
.
The good news is that I have 3 professors/department heads from my university (top 5-10 for the course in the U.K.) happy to write a reference, as they remember me personally due to my involvement in various student roles.
The bad news is that I graduated in 2021, and I feel as though universities will look at the fact that I have no professional references to fill the 2 year gap as a worrying sign.
Questions:
Should I apply with just university references? Is it that big of a deal? Should I contact the admissions departments of Oxford/LSE/St Gallen/ HEC to explain the situation?
I am hoping to make the Ox MFE round 1 applications, which close on the 27th of October. Other universities are not as urgent.
Thank you!
I do not know specifically about Europe.
But I only had academic references for a couple of top 5 Master of finance programs in North America - on top of a previous unrelated aerospace engineering degree.
Moreover, I had graduated in 2020 so my experience was 1 year research in US and 1 year freelance/entrepreneurship back in my home country - not even “verifiable” in the traditional sense.
I had great grades and scores, so got an interview. They did ask about the experiences in the interview.
So unless Europe has some stringent attitude towards academic references, and as long as you have good grades and references, I don’t think it should be an issue.
From what I have been consistently told, it is always good to have specialized references from people who know you extremely well as opposed to generic reference from someone with a name and a title.
That’s re-assuring, thank you for your reply! My professors know me fairly well, but obviously not as well as my SMs. Still, gotta work with what you have. I’ll submit the Prof references then and maybe also get a letter from Deloitte outlining their policy to go with my application. Will also see what the unis say on this. Thanks!
You’re welcome. Just use the profs that know you and your abilities the most. I actually had one interviewer compliment how strong my reference was. And a clarifying email to the admissions committee usually is never hurting - unless European culture is different.
I don't think the reference policy applies in your case. That reference policy is for job/work references (and maybe references/employment confirmations you may need for other reasons). But for a character reference, any person can write that, hence why people sometimes ask clients, colleagues etc. Generally, it is preferred to be a supervisor that has worked closely with you. The Big4 all have this reference policy by the way, and I'm pretty sure plenty of them attend MBAs, where you generally need strong work references to get in (I did that as well).
So you need to talk to the person you asked and explain that this is not a job reference, and ask them to write a character reference for you. Another reason why they referred you to HR could be that they didn't feel in a position to write one for you.
It’s very odd - I’ve spoken with 3 different HR reps now and explained the situation in detail (as I was quite confused as well), and they’ve all confirmed that this rule is in place for character references intended for masters application.
My thought was similar as yours - with how many people big 4 employs, surely this rule has screwed over so many masters/MBA applicants.
I’ll email the specific HR references department to confirm this though.
But thank you for your reply!
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