One aspect of the MBA Application that is beyond your control is the recommendation letter.
GMAT/GRE – you can retake and improve the score.
Essays, with the support of Admissions Consultants like me, you can dramatically improve the quality of the narrative. But for managing supervisors who are 3-30 years older than you, it is not a straightforward process.
I have created a 10-step checklist for you
1. Round 1 vs. Round 2 vs. Both – Decide First
2. Nudge the Supervisor towards a Narrative Direction
3. Persist with Open Communication
5. Professional Relationship vs. Mentorship
6. Vacation and Holidays – Planning Ahead
7. Adjectives – Find the Balance
8. More Examples with Competition in Mind
10. Essays and Recommendation Letter – Is it the Same Person Check?
1. Round 1 vs. Round 2 vs. Both – Decide First
This is the trickiest part of managing supervisors for recommendation letters. The gap between Round 1 and Round 2 is 4 months. When you consider the preparation time – 1 to 2 months before the deadlines, the difference is a noticeable 6 months.
In 6 months, things change in our dynamic global economy.
Recession can wipe out entire teams, projects, or departments, regardless of how you performed.
The influx of AI can make job functions redundant.
The entry of a competitor can prepone deadlines.
Under such stressful circumstances, don’t put an additional burden on your supervisors with 5 to 7 school recommendation letters – all submitted in one Round.
Space it Out or Round 2
If you follow our 2:3 Strategy - pacing your top 3 schools to two rounds, the quality of your deliverable will improve dramatically. Instead of a copy-paste strategy, if you work on highlighting work ethics for Harvard, entrepreneurial traits for Stanford, vulnerability for Wharton, and a humanized journey for Booth, your admission chances to M7 schools improve dramatically.
The 2:3 Strategy is ideal for the top 10 percentile performers.
For the top 1 percentile performer, remove the band-aid and apply for all the schools in one Round.
The good news is that there is a common Letter of Recommendation format that is similar in most schools, except for Wharton.
Note: In a common Letter of Recommendation (LOR), one question is about your strengths and comparison with peers. The second is about your emotional intelligence in receiving feedback and taking corrective steps.
2. Nudge the Supervisor towards a Narrative Direction
Most applicants, fully aware of the dynamics in a professional relationship, nudge supervisors with reminders on deadlines and sometimes examples that need to be highlighted to turn an application into a win.
Strategic Nudging is different from a follow-up and a list of examples for the letter.
Like how I have highlighted in the M7 MBA Admissions Step #6 on Strategic Collaboration with Supervisors and creating an IMPACT table, your most impactful contributions – qualitatively, quantitatively, and culturally will present relevant examples for the supervisors and internalize your achievements for the essays. When you write the MBA Goals essay, you won’t be stumbling through random events. You would know exactly what to share.
Nudge with a list of examples that also includes IMPACT in dollar terms, time saved, and the secondary impacts – IP for the company, a streamlined process, and the influence the success had on retaining a client or adding new business.
3. Persist with Open Communication
If you are in a company with limited MBAs or in a culture that is highly politicized, one way to jeopardize your admission chances is to under communicate.
Silence or lack of specifics often are considered a license for ‘good enough’ letters.
These letters read like what AI bots write about a person – highly impersonal and generic.
Under what circumstances can you read a letter to verify the quality?
I would say – under no circumstances. But we as consultants can work as a bridge to evaluate the quality of the letter and offer you with a feedback on what needs to be improved.
Open communication on what is missing needs to be carefully expressed.
Under no circumstances should the supervisor feel that their writing is the culprit. The range of sensitivity to one’s writing skills is broad. As a writer, I am sensitive and self-critical, but if the supervisor is known to mask their weakness, expressing openly that a paragraph needs better prose could be counterproductive.
Admission Consultant’s Note
If the person’s first language is not English, schools allow certified translators to capture the essence of the person’s recommendation letter. It would be wise to use a translator rather than force the person to write a mediocre narrative in English. Reach out to the admissions team and ask for permission before seeking any such service.
Can you fire a supervisor?
You can’t do the ‘You are Fired!’ catchphrase but the 2:3 application strategy could avoid such risks where your dream school’s admission chances are not all ruined by one supervisor’s shoddy writing.
In Round 2, ask a different supervisor.
Another open communication that is essential is whether the person is willing to share their recommendation letter with a consultant or even hear suggestions on improving the letter.
I have experienced both sides of the cases where accomplished HBS/Stanford Alum have listened and changed the narrative to fit the strategy while some ignored such advice. Nevertheless, open communication gives you the chance to steer the narrative in a particular direction even if the supervisor doesn’t literally follow all the suggestions.
4. Coach, when all Fails
I am against coaching a supervisor.
Most are in senior roles and won’t take such communication kindly – even if it is initiated by an experienced consultant like me.
The autonomy of the process is compromised.
Under what circumstances does Coaching work?
There are industries like Automobile and Manufacturing where an MBA is not necessarily the first qualification that peers are aiming for. You will find the odd supervisor with an MBA, but it is unlikely to be the norm. Then there are countries like Japan and Korea where the Business School culture is underdeveloped.
If you are from these countries or work in the region, communicating the process like how you communicate with an American boss who is exposed to all kinds of MBAs – tier 1, tier 2, and M7, won’t give the same desired results.
Here, extensive communication about the admission process, the qualities schools value, the expected narrative, and a few strategic directions are needed for a coherent narrative. We do that with our guideline document in our recommendation letter editing. This way, the supervisor is fully aware of the expectations you have set and the examples that need to be highlighted for a persuasive recommendation letter.
5. Professional Relationship vs. Mentorship
An advantage of working with one employer is that your boss typically turns into your mentor. After the initial ‘professional’ relationship, once you have sailed through a few setbacks in the company – market dynamics changing, products or services not meeting expectations, or conflicts in a team, your trusted support in the harsh weather will not be easily forgotten.
The supervisor will put in the time to reminiscence the time when you went beyond your duty and marshalled the team to achieve goals that seemed impossible then.
Even a layoff from circumstances outside your performance won’t jeopardize your admission chances. I have seen this during the pandemic and a few recessionary years where the person was let go due to budget cuts and departments shutting down, but the supervisor wrote highly of the applicant. And it worked.
In professional relationship where the supervisor knows you for a year or two, the communication needs to be delicately balanced.
One, they don’t know much about you beyond the context of projects. In a hybrid work culture, it is even more challenging to truly know a person. When the relationship is entirely professional, don’t try to be too friendly to get your ‘recommendation letter.’
Authentic professional communication will give much better results in such relationships.
6. Vacation and Holidays – Planning Ahead
A challenge you are likely to face if you plan to apply during Round 2 is the December travel for vacations.
Persuading a supervisor to write about an example that shows your delicate management of a crisis, overcoming an unethical decision, or a DEI example on discrimination, while they relax with mind-altering substances are two universes that are tough to converge.
You should strategize ahead with the supervisor’s travel plans in mind.
Reaching out a month and half early – both for Round 1 and Round 2 is the best way to start the communication, share the impactful examples and suggest traits that needs to be highlighted to complement or supplement your qualities.
7. Adjectives – Find the Balance
Like in amateur stories where the first scene is an action – an accident, an explosion, or an event without the setup, recommendation letters with overuse of adjectives are signs that either the letter was written by the applicant, or the supervisor was coached into believing that strong endorsement means excessive use of adjectives.
Imagine this. In real life, look back at all the times when someone praised you.
How many adjectives did they use when you demonstrated impressive leadership, communication, creativity, or problem-solving skills?
My guess is that they stuck with 1-2 adjectives and repeated it. That is how we communicate.
The recommendation letter should not be any different.
A personality trait can encompass multiple qualities. As human beings, we understand instinctively what these qualities mean.
Admission Consultant’s Note
‘Leadership encompasses initiative, persistence, pivoting, communication, talent management, talent spotting, inclusive growth and vision for a larger goal, depending on the context of the leadership narrative.’
The other end of the spectrum is cultures where the use of adjectives is considered insincere. Even legitimate appreciation through adjectives is looked down upon. When there are no adjectives, the letter will look like a log of the tasks you completed – the worst kind of recommendation letter.
The best recommendation letters will have adjectives at the right paragraph – often, ending with an adjective while the top half are all about the specific action the applicant took.
8. More Examples with Competition in Mind
When I edited recommendation letters or suggested ways to improve the narrative, it was never the number of examples that was a problem. It was always a lack of context or the examples turning into a cliché.
The best way to avoid such scenarios is to educate the supervisor about the competition.
Applicants who target Harvard and Stanford are different from those who target Wharton or Booth.
Then there are applicants who get admitted into 7 to 15 ranked schools, gain confidence, and then apply to M7 schools.
Whichever is your path to realizing your potential, the competition and application pool are different. And so is the scale of the achievement, the unique life journeys quoted in the essays, and interactions with high profile clients in the letter.
Once the supervisor realizes the competition, they will be inclined to cite examples that are impactful in any culture, region, or industry. Such examples are paramount for essays and recommendation letters.
9. 5 Star Rating by Default
In all recommendation letter forms, there is a rating grid where the supervisor must rate applicants on leadership, communication and team building skills.
An error in perception is that – like job appraisal forms, the grid should never be optimistically graded.
Full Rating for all traits except for a weakness.
Even in weakness, suggest the recommender not to harshly deduct points .
MBA Recommendation letter quality rating is like Delivery and Car Ride ratings. 5 stars by default.
10. Essays and Recommendation Letter – Is it the Same Person Check?
It is unethical to read your recommendation letter but as a consultant, I can read both and understand how the supervisor has highlighted your contributions.
One big mismatch that I often witnessed is the uniquely and often brilliantly crafted essays with our help, but the letter is ‘meah..’
The impactful stories and journeys are never validated by the letter.
Admission chances depend on how these two deliverables match in storyline and IMPACT.
I will nudge, coach, or communicate openly about the expectations.
