Recommendation Letters Problem and Q

[g_bethanis]

Hello,

I plan to apply to the top 10 MBA universities in the USA.
I understand all of them would require a few recommendation letters (2 or 3).

Anyway, the problem is that I only have 2-3 people that I trust them to write a recommendation letter for me. The question is: could each one of them write 1 letter which I would then submit to all 10 universities? Or would they have to write a separate one for each university (perhaps if different universities ask different questions to be addressed in the letters)?
As you understand, I would have a tough time trying to convince them to write 10 different letters! Hence the question...

Also, will the universities call the person who recommended me to ask him more questions? If yes, is it 100% sure, or 1 out of 10 universities do make a call. Obviously if I need to tell the person who writes the recommendation letter for me, that he will receive 10 calls from 10 different universities over the next couple of months, he will not be as keen on writing those letters for me... But anyway, I need to know the reality, so that I can inform him about the procedure beforehand.
If universities do call, what is the average call duration? Is it like a couple of minutes or 30 minutes?? Finally, what types of questions they ask?

Since this is a very serious problem I am encountering, I would highly appreciate a good response from one of the Admissions Consultants!

Many thanks.

George

[mili]

Hi George -

My sincere apologies for the delayed response! You can certainly have the same 2-3 recommenders write letters for all the schools, but they should be prepared to write a different letter for each school. The schools do ask different questions, and it's important that the recommenders are prepared to answer them (rather than copy/paste responses). With that said, I'd say there's at least 60% overlap between most schools, so once they write the first letter, it should get easier from there!

Schools don't make it a practice to call recommenders. Usually they only call if they have reason to doubt information in the application.

Good luck!
Mili

Mili Mittal
Senior Consultant
http://www.mbamission.com

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[g_bethanis]

Thank you mili. You are always very helpful. :-)