I work in a non-traditional industry (education), and I'm applying to four top programs this fall. Neither of my recommenders have ever written an MBA recommendation before. They don't know what to write and were shocked when I told them it had to be at least 1,000 words.
Where can I find a good, strong, and successful recommendation letter to show them? They need an example to work from.
1000 words? While I'm not an expert in this field, I have never heard of a word limit for references, let alone one set at 1000 words.
Where are you getting this information from? Also, what happens more often than not is that you offer to write the actual reference, and simply ask them to sign off on it (very common in finance and academia, where professionals are too busy/too lazy to give a fuck)
This can't be right, if I asked the MD at my BB bank to write 1000 words about me, he'd kick me out of his office. I got into several top programs with recco's that were probably between 400-500 words a piece.
4 page minimum? I'm not an expert but I've written letters before and have never written 4 pages or heard of a minimum like that
Seems like a lot to me too. Mine weren't nearly that long.
@dthollow - how much coaching did you do for your recs? I'm in a similar situation where the MD and Partner writing recs for me are busy and not exactly "coachable." Curious to hear your thoughts on how you managed the process.
I was essentially asked to write my own recco, which I refused (really paranoid about crossing lines on applications). Instead, I just provided a really brief and concise list of things I had worked on and accomplished while at my bank and had a 5 minute conversation about what I viewed as my strong points. I only was able to read 2 of the 3 recs that got submitted, but they both worked out well enough.
A quick google search can find a format for them to use when writing it, all my MD and VP needed help with was specific things that I did for the bank while I was there that they could emphasize. I left it up to them to decide how to frame it and how to describe me as a person (work ethic, quality of work etc...)
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