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kwok007
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ask a retired employee to write my LOR? 13 Feb 2015, 22:43
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Hi Guys,

I have a question: can I ask my retired mentor to write me a LOR instead of my direct boss? My situation is a big strange. I am an engineer, but my manager is a business person who knows little about what I am doing. (This is weird as our company started to use pure business people to manage engineering department.) So I am thinking to ask my mentor to write me a LOR because he kinda supervised me and really knows me well in terms of day to day work and my leadership in handling projects, but he has recently retired and I don't have a better option so far. Could you share with me your opinions? Thanks in advance!
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aakanshal
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ask a retired employee to write my LOR? 14 Feb 2015, 14:56
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Hi Kwok007,

I'd recommend that you choose the retired mentor over the boss who doesn't know you well enough.
If you have queries as to if this is acceptable by schools, you could drop them a query asking about it. The grad admissions team is usually very helpful.
Also, its perfectly alright to ask a supervisor who is now not in the same firm as you are, or if you went ahead to different firms but you want a lor from them. I had this clarified with a couple of B-schools. As such, I think it should be okay to take a recently retired mentor's LoR too. Seems legit.

Goodluck!
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kwok007
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ask a retired employee to write my LOR? 15 Feb 2015, 19:24
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Thanks for your opinion!
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VeritasPrepMike
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ask a retired employee to write my LOR? 26 Nov 2015, 22:02
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I think that is a fantastic idea. A retired employee will probably have lots of time to devote to putting together a strong letter of recommendation. However, what is just as important as picking the right recommender is making sure they are well prepared to write a good letter for you. Make sure they are well aware of your accomplishments, what you want them to highlight about you and what business schools are looking for in their application. We often forget to prepare the recommender and it can come back to haunt you if you are a borderline candidate and your letter of recommendation is just ok.