How Much Do MBA Recommendations Matter?
Anybody who knows me well (or knows my GMAT articles and videos well) has heard me express somewhat unconventional opinions about the importance of MBA recommendations and GMAT scores. Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t the end-all-be-all of your application.
To be clear: work experience is the most important part of your MBA admissions profile. By far. Honestly, nothing else is even close, and that includes the GMAT, MBA recommendations, and plenty of other things that students endlessly stress about.
For what it’s worth: the GMAT (or GRE or EA) was initially designed to be a relatively small part of MBA admissions. When the GMAT was first created decades ago, the idea was that MBA programs would use the GMAT just to make sure that the tougher academic classes (particularly quant courses like statistics and economics) wouldn’t make students run away from business schools with tears streaming down their faces.
Other than that, MBA programs are concerned with the GMAT only insofar as it impacts their rankings. Unfortunately, GMAT scores are part of some rankings formulas, and since the rankings are part of an MBA program's prestige, admissions committees are forced to pay attention to their GMAT averages.
But what about recommendation letters? How important are MBA recommendations, and what constitutes a great recommendation?
How Much Weight is Given to MBA Recommendations?
In a way, I think that recommendations are a little bit like the GMAT in terms of the role that they’re meant to play in the MBA admissions process. In theory, GMAT scores shouldn’t really be an issue at all, unless your score is relatively weak for your chosen MBA program – once you’ve “checked the box” with your score, schools prefer to focus on other aspects of your candidacy.
Recommendations, similarly, aren't much of an issue, unless they're flawed in some way.
I'm pretty convinced that the vast majority of MBA recommendations are solid-but-boring, and that's probably good enough. Your boss will probably say "yup, this employee of mine is great," without really putting too much effort or emotion into the writing. This type of recommendation does almost nothing for you – good or bad. It won't help you, but at least it won't hurt. Based on our experience as MBA admissions consultants, the overwhelming majority of recommendations fit this category: they’re perfectly adequate, and have no real impact on your odds of admission.
From this, you might be gathering that recommendations aren’t as critical to your application as you might have imagined. The data seems to back this up. A Poets and Quants survey of business schools found that recommendation letters account for only 7.6% of their overall admissions decision-making. That puts recommendation letters behind undergraduate GPA, interviews, essays, and – yeah, you guessed it – your composite GMAT score.
This hints at the idea that MBA recommendations likely only matter if they are either unusually positive or unusually negative in some way. With this in mind, recommendations probably deserve far less than 7.6% of your total MBA-related effort and worries: as long as your recommendations show that you are a sane and pleasant professional, you’ll probably be fine.
Can MBA Recommendations Hurt Your Chances of Admission?
Although you don’t need to worry too much about MBA letters of recommendation, there is one thing that should warrant some concern: getting a letter that actually makes you look bad.
How might you get hurt by a rec? Well, your boss might secretly hate you. You might also make the mistake of choosing an irrelevant recommender. If, for example, your recommender is your supervisor from a job you had eight years ago, he or she might be completely unable to speak competently about your current skills and situation. Worse yet, the recommendation might make MBA programs wonder why you can't convince a more recent colleague or supervisor to write a recommendation for you.
Bizarrely, we occasionally receive requests to write recommendations for our MBA admissions clients. That's a terrible, terrible idea. We’re just MBA admissions consultants and tutors who get paid by the hour. In theory, we could write elegant-sounding recommendations for you, but it would be blisteringly obvious to readers that we have an economic stake in your success, and that we are a long, long way from being unbiased colleagues or supervisors with intimate knowledge of your professional talents.
Similarly, I think it's a mistake to ask career coaches, mentors, or friends to write your MBA recommendations. Stick very strictly to people who know you in a professional context, and you'll be fine.
That said, what can you do to make a recommendation great? If most “good” recommendations don’t really help or hurt... well, is there a way to engineer an MBA recommendation that stands out in some way and significantly helps your candidacy?
What Makes a Good MBA Recommendation
Getting truly outstanding MBA recommendations is tricky. You presumably can’t write them yourself, so you basically need to pray that your recommenders are unusually convincing when it comes to describing you and your achievements.
But there are certain things you can do to sway the odds in your favor. One of the most important steps is making 100% sure that your recommenders know exactly what your plans are for business school and beyond. Give them your CV or resume and a full rundown of your plans. Give them your MBA application essays, if you can. If your recommender can specifically address your goals and strengths, it makes the recommendation much more credible and powerful.
The very best recommendations are the ones that grab readers by the collar, stare them in the eyes, and force them to listen. For example, an outstanding recommendation for somebody named Sarah might feel a little bit like this:
“Listen, butthole. I know everything there is to know about Sarah. She's applying to your school, and she's a f**king amazing human being, and she's an unbelievable professional with senior management written all over her, and you're a damned fool if you don't get down on your knees and beg her to attend your school. She's the best. You hear me, a**hole?! She's the best.
Now, get down on your knees, and BEG her to come to your school. You'll be glad you did. Hey! On your knees, NOW!... "
Okay, the swearing is unnecessary, but if your MBA recommender can write with that sort of spirit, you'll catch the admissions committee’s attention.
Let's be honest: not everybody can (or will) write an enthusiastic, engaging, energetic recommendation. But if you have any colleagues, clients, or supervisors who can go to bat for you like that, beg them to write your MBA recs.
But if you don't know anybody who is that persuasive, no worries. At the absolute most, your recs only account for 7.6% of your application’s chance for success. Just don't screw it up, and you'll be fine.