Recommendations
Recommendations are key. You want to ask individuals who know exactly what impact you've made in your professional or academic life, people who can give specifics. Give your references plenty of time to prepare the recommendation before the application deadline. Each year, several applications that are delayed by an overdue letter of recommendation. You also want to make sure your references understand your goals and how an M.B.A. from particular business school will help you achieve them. To do this, some candidates provide copies of their essays to their references, while others set up a specific meeting to discuss their aspirations and M.B.A. application.
You may only need two or three recommenders total, but it depends on how many schools you apply to, and on how busy your recommenders are. Start by recruiting your immediate supervisor or, if this isn’t possible, another coworker who knows you well and can comment on your professional abilities. You’ll then want to add one more colleague from your work, and perhaps someone who can comment on your abilities in another light, such as someone whom you know from an extracurricular activity. You can reasonably expect each person to complete at most three or four recommendations. More is possible, but you’ll risk spreading each recommender too thin. So, be ready to recruit more recommenders as needed, assuming that each additional recommender is also qualified to comment on your strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, though, your immediate supervisor will complete a recommendation for every one of your target schools. Because most schools ask that one of your recommendations come from your supervisor, do everything in your power to make it easy for her to complete a recommendation for each one of your applications. If you know ahead of time that your supervisor’s writing isn’t strong but don’t feel comfortable reviewing her recommendation, then consider recruiting a capable third party to serve as an editor.