MIT Sloan MBA program is among the few programs that only asks for 1 recommendation letter. For the novice applicant, this is a relief, but as someone who has edited hundreds of recommendation letters, one recommendation letter instead of 2 makes the drafting and editing even tougher.
Follow these 4 Strategies to build a winning case for your candidacy:
1) Choose the Best Supervisor
It is extremely common to find non-cooperative supervisors who are unwilling even to sell what the department or the applicant was building (technology), offering (Finance and Marketing), or strategizing (Finance and Consulting).
Selling is a dirty word for such recommenders, although everything that you see in your room or the products you bought digitally or subscribed to are the efforts of suave marketers and salespersons.
The excuses are all framed as “I can’t be inauthentic about the job/role,” but in reality, it is a subtle form of sabotage. Many dodge this challenge by balancing the less-than-spectacular recommendation letter from one supervisor with a heartfelt narrative from another supervisor. We do our part of persuading the non-cooperating supervisor with reasoning about offering more context in recommendation letters. And also educates them about the importance of storytelling in recommendation letters – although we don’t need the same extent as essays.
For MIT Sloan, don’t go with the current supervisor if the person is non-cooperative.
2) Additional Questions and 2-Page Length
Unlike the common letters of recommendation letter with a question about the supervisor, question about what makes the applicant stand out from peers, and the feedback question, the MIT Sloan MBA application also includes three additional questions:
“Please give an example of the applicant’s impact on a person, group, or organization.”
“Please give a representative example of how the applicant interacts with other people.”
“Please tell us anything else we should know about this applicant.”
When you have six questions to fit into 2 pages, you must be judicious with words and strategically split the traits.
Ideally, include functional strengths in the standout from peers’ questions and impact on the organization for the second strength question.
The representative example of how an applicant interacts with other people is a measure of your humbleness.
One thing that MIT detests the most is the ‘arrogance’ of super achievers.
Anyone who overcame a challenging milestone will feel proud and likely to capture that sentiment in the cover letter. The sentiment needs to be tempered with examples of your humbleness in the recommendation letter.
Balance is key.
Anything else about the applicant should always be about an aspect of your personality that is not easily captured in the cover letter, optional essay, or resume. It could also be a vision or a goal you have that you have shared with the supervisor. This strategy works if the supervisor is your mentor, too.
3) Awards
Validating an award mentioned in the resume is critical. You must guide supervisors to offer additional context about the award (internal or industry) or even commendation from clients. The resume might have captured a few contexts, but if you follow the 2 to 3 metric rules for each entry in an MBA resume, you might have learned that there are limitations.
Allow the supervisor to offer context about the role of the product in the company’s growth or the strategic value of your contributions. This is not simple brainstorming. That is why, in our recommendation letter editing service, I spent a considerable part of our interaction breaking down the projects in the context of industry, trends, and job functions.
Once the awards are validated by the supervisor, the next goal is to show your engineering/doer mind.
4) Engineering or Doer Mindset – MIT’s DNA
MIT Sloan changed its essay to a cover letter to accommodate a large engineering applicant pool – even those who have pivoted from engineering to finance or consulting. The school strongly believes in accepting doers – those willing to get their hands dirty instead of just ideating in the comforts of the conference room. Even in Consulting, the on-the-ground consultant and the insights captured from fieldwork are valued over ‘Eureka’ moments that seldom appear for the creatives. It is all about a mindset of experimentation and creatively connecting two disparate functions.
Suggest your supervisor to capture such examples.
