Your boss, mentor, and good friend has agreed to write letters of recommendation to three business schools on your behalf. You shrewdly have prepared a package of information for her: your resume, a summary of each program's values, excellent quotes from reviews, the questions she will respond to for each school, and the deadlines for the letters. When you give her the information six weeks before the letter is due, she gives the packet a funny look, swallows hard, and acknowledges receipt.

Three weeks later, you email your boss to ask her if she has made any progress on the letters. “I’ve thought about them,” she emails back.

Another week goes by, and you call her, “How’s it going?”

“Look,” she says, “I really want to help you, but I am swamped. You write them, and I’ll sign them. You know what should be in them, and I simply don’t have the time to work on them now. I still really want to help you, but I didn’t realize that the letters would be so demanding or that I would have this new project dumped on me.”

Now what?

This topic came up at the Tuck Conference for Educational Consultants that I attended in June at Dartmouth. The Tuck admissions committee strongly condemned, as do most schools, the widespread practice of applicants writing letters for supervisors’ signatures. They condemned it on an ethical level, which I disagree with, and also on a substantive level, where I must admit they have a point.

The letters are supposed to confirm data found in your application and provide a fresh perspective on your application. If you write the letter, your letter does a poor job of the former and fails entirely at the latter.

At the Tuck Conference, one of the consultants, Luvy Gonzalez, said that when her client is confronted with this situation, she tells her client to invite the recommender out to lunch, take the recommendation questions along, and interview the recommender by asking him or her the questions found in the form. The applicant jots down the recommender's answers, drafts the letter containing the recommender's answers, and gives it to the recommender for signature.

The resulting letter really is the recommender’s, and yet he or she doesn’t have to take the time to write it. It contains that other perspective that the adcom values so highly and is authentic. If you make good use of the interview notes, the recommendation will also have the recommender's voice.

The Tuck adcom members present when this suggestion was made didn’t comment, but they also didn’t object.

If you want to prepare for your interview, check out the MBA Interview Feedback Database. It's free, and you will find there feedback organized by school from thousands of MBA interviews.

Also, after you interview, please take a minute to fill out a questionnaire and share your interview experience. 

Finally, if you are interested in individualized  interview coaching or a mock interview, please review Accepted.com's MBA interview assistance.

"MBA Job Market is Poised for Recovery" presents good news to you, MBA wannabes, especially if you have relevant experience.

Recruiter responses to questions about the importance of experience in our recent recruiter chat and the emphasis on experience in the WSJ survey, as reflected in this article, make me question the wisdom of applying to b-school with little or no experience, even if the schools will accept you.

ETS announced the first administrations of the new TOEFL.  You can read the details, by clicking through, but here are a few big ones:

• The test will be administered via the Internet at ETS testing centers around the world.
• Test-takers will choose from 30-40 administration dates.
• The test includes a recorded speaking section.
• It attempts to integrate the different communications function and really test what students at higher educational institutions need to know before coming to study in the US.

Frankly, TOEFL results in the past were notoriously unreliable as a measure of English fluency. I can't tell you how many applicants I spoke with who had high TOEFL scores and with whom I could barely communicate. Those students were at an enormous disadvantage in their courses. Conversely, although much less frequently, I would speak with someone who had a low score and was completely fluent. I hope the ETS has fulfilled its stated mission with this test and has developed an accurate test of English readiness for post-secondary education.

Reminder: Accepted.com is hosting two chats this week:

• Forte Foundation: The MBA Value Proposition for Women with alumni of leading business schools currently working for top firms like Citicorp. Wednesday Sept. 28 at 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET/12:00 AM GMT
  
• Haas Happenings with Pete Johnson and Jett Pihakis, plus current Haas students. Thursday Sept. 29, 2005 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT.

Please join us.