Recommendation Letters: from Selection to Submission

Part 3 of 5 — Build Your Best MBA Application: One Piece at a Time, a free Friday series (5:00–5:45pm ET). Letters of rec are the one piece of your application you don't fully control — so start them first. This session covers the full arc, selection to submission: picking recommenders in the right priority order (your most recent direct supervisor beats the biggest title who barely knows you), asking early with a gratitude-first outreach that makes it easy to say yes, and prepping your recommenders with talking points and evidence so they write something specific and authentic instead of generic praise. We'll also go inside what recommenders actually fill out — the GMAC Common LOR's competency grid and free-text questions — and the ratings guidance most applicants get wrong: why all 5s can hurt you, and how "lower" ratings tied to real growth areas make a letter read as credible. You'll leave with a recommender plan you can put in motion the same week: who to ask, how to ask, how to follow up, and how to make sure every letter lands before the deadline.