I now find myself on the other side of the table -writing letters of rec for MBA applications rather than asking someone for them. The vast amount of information that the schools as recommenders to provide is frankly insulting. How much time do they think we have? Gone are the days apparently when the recommender can just write up a nice 1-page letter and simply copy it to each school. Nope. Now I have to jump in to a system for each school and click a bunch of survey-like questions, as well as fill out mini-essays for various aspects of the candidate's background. And I have to do that for each single school. Seriously, how much time do the schools think people have? It's one thing to ask a candidate to write a lot. They are opting in to a competitive process for a school of their choice, and I can see why setting high administrative barriers might be a good filtration process. But requiring recommenders to spend hours per school for each single school? WTH are they thinking?
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I ask my analysts/associates to let me fuck their girlfriends in exchange for going through the headache of doing that.
Or alternatively $500 if they don't have a willing girlfriend.
When did you graduate from Oxford?
When did I say I went to Oxford?
The schools do it so they can easilly distinguish good from ok from just bad LoRs. They communicate to applicants to make sure you pick someone who is willing to invest an inoordinate amount of time, but I do agree with you its still too much. I was thankful mine were super enthusiastic about it
IMO Recommendations can really put you over the top if they dovetail well with the essays and story. The way you do this is to COMPLETELY brief the recommender ("I was really proud of XYZ accomplishment where I did A, B C with DEF outcome. I would appreciate your perspective on that in the recommendation, I am trying to emphasize my leadership/teamwork/whatever qualities especially")
Sounds like your applicants just threw the rec over the wall to you, effectively putting you in a position to write a mediocre rec, even if you mean to write a glowing one.
Pretty sure my main LOR writer got me into my top choice R1. I felt pretty borderline and somehow got in.
Had 2 LOR writers for another school where I didn't realize I gave conflicted information to both. I wouldn't be surprised if I got dinged due to lack of clarity about a certain part of what I wanted both writers to focus on.
Just make the candidate write it and do a quick review.
That's what my counselors did for undergrad admissions
yep. that's the answer.
I am a first-year MBA right now and I have to say managing up on these letters with my recommenders stressed me the hell out and I felt like such a pain in the ass. They said they didn't mind but they were too nice to say it. They definitely didn't enjoy it. Case-in-point. I gave them some nice bottles of wine and a letter after they were all done but yeah didn't really make up for how annoying it is. The emails from each school would never go through our work server either so I would have to switch to personal emails it was hellish.
I'm planning to apply to MBA next year and this kind of makes me nervous, especially as I just started a new job last month and so will have only been under my current manager for less than year by the time I apply.
I also thought that it would be easier for schools that accept the common LoR where recommenders just need to copy and paste the same responses each time. Is this not actually the case?
Many comments above mention that the candidate should write the LOR and give it to the recommender to adjust and submit. Lord knows I did that when I applied.
However that does not address my original point, which is that these days the recommenders have to go into separate online systems for each school and fill out multiple essays and check multiple survey buttons. So I can't exactly repurpose one letter for each school. I now have to spend an inordinate amount of time filling out an inordinate amount of info for.each.freaking.school. Even repurposing and cutting and pasting creatively from the LOR to the forms I still to do a huge amount of work. I think it's absurd. No serious and busy business person can be reasonably asked to do this. The schools have jumped the shark.
Yeah, you should basically be writing your LoR for your recommender and some folks even wanted me to go through and click all the buttons for them. The whole bschool admissions process is a scam lol
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