The prompt from Columbia SIPA’s application checklist instructs, “Choose recommenders who, individually or in aggregate, will give the best sense of your qualifications for study at SIPA.” Sounds easy, right? In practice, for a lot of applicants, choosing recommenders can be difficult. You may want to choose a former professor but you’ve been out of school for… Continue reading
POST CATEGORY : Letters of Recommendation
What to do if your GPA, GMAT score, or other numbers suck
With applying to graduate school, there are a lot of numbers you could worry about. There’s your GPA, your GMAT or GRE score, your age! Here’s a handy and quick guide on what to target for in each of these areas and what to do if your numbers are out of range for your target… Continue reading
How to Choose Recommenders for your MBA & MPP Applications
Recommendations are one of the most important aspects of your application. It’s also one of the parts of the application that my clients stress the most about in the early stages of working together. I always make sure to tackle this early on in the process so that we can move on to more important… Continue reading
How to Convince Your Current Boss to Give You a Letter of Recommendation
One of the most anxiety-provoking parts of applying to graduate school is asking your current boss for a letter of recommendation. For some people, it feels like going up to your boss and screaming “I QUIT!!! . . . That is, in 11 months once school starts. I hope that’s okay with you . …. Continue reading
Five Ways to Know if Your Boss is a Supporter or a Hater of your Graduate School Applications
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if your boss will be ecstatic or enraged if you ask for a letter of recommendation for graduate school. Rather than make yourself the office guinea pig, look out for these tell-tale signs of a boss who is a supporter of her subordinates leaving the job for graduate school: Figure… Continue reading