Recommendation letter from a politician?

Question

Hi all, I am planning to apply to M7 and I'm in a position in which I can get a reco letter from an influential political figure. (I'm from Europe but think Boris Johnson or Jack Lew type person from my country)

Would you think this would be beneficial for my application or would it backfire? Do M7 schools value this type of thing? (as far as I know, these are elitist schools that would love this)

Thanks!

bb · Answer

Welcome to GMAT Club! The traditional reply to this question is - it depends. Does the politician know you personally and has indepth examples he/she can bring up? If yes, then it would be great! However, usually it does backfire with politicians who get lots of requests from people they don't really know, and as the result, end up writing very vague and generic letters (often drafted by their admins), which in turn do more bad than good. So the rule of thumb with celeb recommendations - make sure they fit your application/profile/story and would be deep enough. Otherwise, adcom will just dismiss it and you would have done much better with a recommendation from a chief engineer of a chemical plant :wink:

VeritasPrepDozie · Answer

Unless the person can speak very specifically to your work experience and the impact you have made in the organization then you will be better served finding someone who can. This strategy only works if this type of high profile can do all of those things otherwise they will see right thru it

Mo2men · Answer

Although schools love those elite figures, it might be a trap for you. As mentioned above, S/he need to be very specific about your skills with real examples. Also make sure that s/he does not delegate this mission to her/his admin office. Most of M7 use third party to verify every aspect in your application and contact your employers and recommenders. For example, you can take Duke which uses 'Re Vera Services, LLC'. You do not want her/him hesitate during the verification check as it will create unnecessary noise about your application. Please read this link:

https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/incoming/docu ... n_2012.pdf

Good luck

ARINGO · Answer

You already got some great pointers regarding this from the other posters, but I would like to add that a lot of high profile politicians have at least some questionable or controversial aspects to them, to their past etc. So I would be very careful, unless you know for sure that the politician in question has no controversial views of any kind, has never been linked to anything people could feel strongly about and so on. I would also advise against it unless there is a real, proven reason for the politician to recommend you, as there are politicians that recommend a lot of people for a lot of things, as has already been mentioned, so it makes sense that a recommendation like that might seem a bit suspicious.

All that said, however, one of the candidates ARINGO (aringo.com) worked with this year had a very low GMAT but worked with us on his application and used a known member of parliament in his country as a recommendation, and that worked for him! (Hard to say how much the recommendation affected the end result, though)

If you want, you can always PM me with more information about the politician in question, and I could try to look them up and give you a more specific opinion based on what I find.

Also keep in mind that the letters of recommendation are not identical from school to school, as each school requires you to answer specific questions. The politician might not be willing to answer questions from several schools (depending on your actual relationship with the politician of course), so if you do intend to apply to several different schools, keep this in mind in order to choose his letter of recommendation for the school where you think it will do most good.
Good luck!

Recommendation letter from a politician?

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