Recommender Advice

[jhuntington14]

Hello,

I need a little advice. I recently asked a former supervisor at my current job for a recommendation for b-school. He asked me if I would write it and then he could just take a look and see if it was ok. I didn't feel comfortable with that, so I decided to turn down the offer.

So, here is my dilemma, I am currently in a promotion year. I have a few big projects on my plate, and I don't want to hurt my promotion chances this coming January by letting my current supervisor know that I plan on leaving my job for b-school. So here are my remaining choices for recommendations:

-Supervisor from my former employer. I left the firm almost a year and a half ago.

-Community/business partner. I run a non-profit outside of work and I have worked closely with this individual to put on community events, etc.

-My mission president from my LDS mission in Japan.

I feel like the last two would be able to write the strongest recommendations because of the amount of leadership I was able to exhibit in the roles I was in when working with them. Could you offer any insight on my situation?

Thank you!

[mbamissionjenK]

Hi there,

Tough situation, I understand, though if it makes you feel any better, many applicants are in similar situations of not telling their current supervisor they are applying, and you'd just need to briefly mention that on the application or in the optional essay.

If possible it's best to get at least a former supervisor if not your current one, so I'd probably lean towards that, and maybe the community/business partner.

Also a side note for scenarios like you described at first, agree you don't want to write a recommendation for someone, for sure (and schools could tell if you did!). Something that sometimes helps in that situation is to offer to put together an outline or bullet points of suggestions that a recommender may want to include.. and then they just have to put them into a recommendation format and edit slightly etc, less work for them than from scratch but not the same as you writing it. Your first choice is still for them to do it on their own of course. ;)

Good luck to you!