- How many schools are you applying to?
- Do you want to submit all of your applications in Round 1 or spread them out?
- Will your recommenders be overloaded by your requests?
- How many questions will each recommender need to answer?
When making your requests:
Have each recommender write no more than 3 letters.When I submitted my apps, I applied to six schools, all First Round (GSB, HBS, Fuqua, Darden, and others). I chose 6 people to write my letters of recommendation with the 3 I thought would write the strongest letters writing for the schools I most wanted to be accepted at.
I didn't want to put all my eggs in one basket. I gave the three strongest writers the most notice that I needed letters, but I didn’t wait too long to let the others know, as well. I did not want to wait until the last minute to try to coordinate my letters.
Do you really need a letter writer for each school you apply to?
Maybe not! In retrospect, I may have been a little too overzealous about this. I wanted to apply to all of my schools in Round One because I thought I was a long shot candidate.That’s why I chose six recommenders for six schools. I tried to do best-fit matching and allocate people to schools and spread them out across the six people.
Even though I had six recommenders, none was recommending me for more than three schools.
I wasn’t able to locate information about the recommendation questions for each of the schools. I thought each person would have to answer lots of questions for each school, and I didn’t want to overload my recommenders. Later, I found out that the questions were pretty similar from school to school.In fact, in one instance I had one recommender for Stanford GSB send me the recommendation to tweak to send to Fuqua School of Business because one of my other writers was not able to come through.
So, the main reason I chose 6 people to write letters for 6 schools was that I wanted to be respectful of their time. Depending on how many schools you are applying to and what questions your letter writers may be asked, you may be able to get by with fewer than one letter writer per school.
Follow through!
No matter how many letter writers you have, you will want to be sure to follow through with them and keep them on task. I gave all of mine at least three months notice, but we all know how that works when you have a job.
Some people may start writing the recommendation three days before it‘s due! I didn’t want to put my fate in someone’s hands who might have started too late and had far too much to write.
Be sure to check in with your letter writers. Start checking with them about a month after you ask them. Check in about once a week to see how things are going and whether they need help with anything.
During the last couple of weeks before the letters are due, escalate your check-ins. Send e-mail reminders. Share articles about your Ivy League business school with tips and hints for good letter writing.
Accept it as your responsibility to keep your letter writers on schedule because you don’t want to be caught without your letters of recommendation when it is time to apply. I had several friends that this happened to, and they had to postpone applying until the next round.
