The ‘How’ Behind a Good Letter of Recommendation

Letters of Recommendation (LORs) are a powerful tool to bolster your chances of securing admit into the university of your choice. People tend to take them lightly, but most often these carry more weightage than your essays. They are extremely resourceful to the college admissions committee as they are instrumental in providing valuable insights into your attitude towards studies, work habits, learning behaviour and your ability to perform to pressures and challenges. They are also a potential source of conveying how robust was your learning environment and academic program.

Skill Maestro presents a comprehensive list of tips to assist you in your process of securing LORs.

1.    Choose the teachers who know you in and out!

You need to be wise while choosing the teachers/counselors/advisers who will write an LOR for you. Your recommenders should be those who are familiar with your intellectual abilities, academic skills, critical thinking skills and communication skills. Those mentors who have seen you coping up to challenges and are aware of your desire to learn are the ones who are best positioned to support your application. Choose the ones who will act in your best interest.

2.    Share your finest details of activities and achievements with your recommenders

Send your CV with the recommender you choose to expose him to your profile completely. If possible, discuss things with him/her. Your recommender might know you in and out, but there might be fine details he/she might not be aware of. Share those details with him/her so that he/she can get a holistic picture of your profile and can help you endorse better.

3.    Sufficiently inform them about the way you are projecting yourself to the university

There needs to be a balance between how you are projecting yourself to the admissions office and what your recommendation letter talks of. Sufficiently inform your recommenders the achievements and strengths that you are highlighting in your application so that things can remain consistent through-out your application.  Share your motivations, ambitions, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses with your recommenders.

4.    Keep them informed about the application deadlines and the relevant forms

Inform your recommenders about the application deadlines and the guidelines and information sought by the universities you are applying to so that you can avoid any discrepancies and last minute hassles.

5.    Give them time!

You need to request your recommenders well in advanced about writing an LOR for you. They need to take out time from their busy schedules thinking about and preparing the letter. This will again help you avoid last minute rushes and will ensure that your LORs are in their best form of expression and not hastily drafted.

So, start looking for your potential recommenders who can project the best form of your talent to the universities of your choice! Needless to say, LORs are not just indispensible but extremely resourceful, to both you and to the admissions committee!

About Skill Maestro At Skill Maestro, We guide prospective students about the entire application process as well as suitable universities as per their profile/test scores. We have consulted dozens of prospective students for MIS across the globe. We have a physical presence in Indore where we also help students prepare for GRE, GMAT & SAT Follow Us  on Google+!

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Choosing the Right University for graduate studies

Taking the GRE/GMAT is only the first step towards your journey of studying in a reputed foreign university. The real and the more taxing task starts after your GRE/GMAT, when you finally decide to apply to universities. Often students get bogged down in deciding what specific course and which universities they should be targeting. Most of them are often wary about not taking wrong decisions, given the cost, time and effort for applying to foreign grad schools.

We list some tips that may come in handy for you to take a wise decision towards choosing which universities to keep in your platter and which ones not to.

1.    Choose authentic sources for rankings

The first step to list down the universities falling under your area of interest and your bracket of your test score is to go through the top 100 universities and deciding which ones are in accordance with your scores. While doing so, it is important to search for universities on legitimate sources. For example, US News is a reliable platform for comparing the rankings of US universities. Similarly, instead of relying on your home country’s search engine, you may reach out to the websites based in the concerned country.

2.    Catch the right people!

Once you have listed down your intended choice of universities from a pool of universities, the next what follows is to go to the official websites of these universities and get a sense of the fine details of the program that they offer (the curriculum, duration, workload etc.). It is often a very good idea to reach out to the college via mail to seek out specific information that you need. While doing so, the concerned administrator might also put you in touch with the current students/alumni (if not, you may request him/her to) to get an honest assessment of the program and the atmosphere and opportunities in the university. Do not shy away from sending mails – the administrators do reply to mails with celerity!

3.    Get insights about opportunities

Talk to the current students/alumni and learn what all opportunities lie once you graduate to get a good clarity of the scope of your program. You may also consult the concerned school’s international students and scholar’s office to know about the Optional Practical Training program (OTP), which allows international students to work in the U.S. legally for one year after graduation as long as their jobs are related to their educational field, as well as about visas.

4.    The often forgotten factor – location!

Students generally tend to forget the location factor while determining the choice of their universities. This is an important factor. For example, if a university is located in an urban centre, it is easier to get good internship opportunities there, rather than if the location of your university is in a small or rural town.

5.    Assessing your chances via pre-application process

For those who are risk averse and want to apply to universities where there is more probability of getting selected, you should definitely assess your chances via pre-application process, which essentially entails sending universities or professors of universities e-mail declaring your interest and scores along with your CV. Though informally, the professors generally tend to give you an evaluation of your application. This might come in handy to assess your chances of being selected, according to which you can choose your universities. You might want to keep more of such universities where your pre-app responses had been positive.
 

It is indeed an onerous task to zero in on your choice of universities given the cost and time constraints. Very often students spend a lot of money in this process, blindly applying to universities and facing discouraging rejections. It is important to know how to optimize your search for the right kind of universities matching your profile so that you don’t burn your pockets and waste your precious time. At Skill Maestro, we are more than dedicated towards this end!

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How to compensate for a low GPA in your application?

 Many a time a lot of our students ask this question. I have a low CGPA.. How do I improve my chances for an admit to a good graduate program? You fervently want to get into a good graduate school, but feel uncertain and hazy over your prospects of getting selected due to your low college/school GPA? If this is the story of your life, read on. This post is dedicated to expound on how to counter low GPAs during application process. While college GPA is an important parameter for application processing, it is not all, and there are ways to deal with it.

We have listed a few such ways to provide you insights and make your lives simpler!

1.    Target for a high GRE/GMAT score

If you’ve had low GPA in your college, but a good score on standardized tests like the GRE or the GMAT, it reflects to the admission committee that while you’ve had low scores in college, you have a reasonably good aptitude and intellectual capabilities. Also scores in college exams are very often a bit subjective since grading pattern/scales and also evaluation criteria and class difficulty differ hugely across countries. Since standardized tests are not subject to such differing patterns, it is a very good indicator of your aptitude since everybody is tested on the same grounds. Thus, if you score reasonably good in these tests, your chances to get selected will significantly escalate.

2.    Take responsibility and offer an explanation

While a high GRE/GMAT score might prove your intellectual capabilities, you still cannot get rid of that low GPA simply with a high GRE/GMAT score. That’s because such a condition suggests that while you are intellectually capable, you are possibly less motivated. It is thus critical not to disregard your low GPA just because you have a decent GRE/GMAT score. Take responsibility for your low GPA in college in your application. There are a number of reasons of low GPA like illness, family issues, lack of maturity, lack of interest/motivation, switch in teachers etc. You could possibly choose one of these and expound on them. When you take a responsibility for your poor grades with a justification, it gives an impression to the admissions committee of your maturity and drive to improve. You could discuss your poor grades in a personal statement or in an additional information field in application form.

3.    Try and get a good recommendation letter

A good rapport with a professor can be a life-saver in case of low GPA. Develop close relationships with teachers and professors so that they may help you with your recommendation letter. A good recommendation letter from a professor that speaks of how you are improving consistently may come as a brownie point. Have an explicit discussion with the teachers/professors you have good rapport with.

4.    Extracurricular or outside enrichment classes

These are often the most strong compensatory steps in your application for your low GPA. You could point out how you spent tons of time on extracurricular activities like sports, arts, competitions, contests, internships, part time jobs, other enrichment classes/certificate courses etc. Colleges often like to have a diverse pool of students in their campus. So if you have been significantly active in say sports, highlight that. Most colleges are often forgiving when they get a good reason to believe that you have been prolific in other activities outside academics.

5.    Take additional learning courses

When you take additional learning courses, it comes as a brownie point.  It gives an impression to the admissions’ committee that you have a drive and motivation to learn. You may consider taking up online e-learning courses (which are becoming very popular these days) or certificate courses with some learning centre or university etc. This can give your application a reasonable weightage. You could also use this to counter for a low GPA in a particular subject. Say, for example, if you didn’t do well in Operations Research subject in your college, you could take up e-learning courses from platforms like Course-Era in the same subject and display your proficiency there and mention in your application that since you could not have the opportunity to do well, you decided to take up a course on Operations Research to enhance your competence.

6.    Wait to apply – Double Masters’

If you are ardently passionate about going to a good university abroad, you may consider waiting. By waiting, we mean, you may enroll yourself into a masters’ course in some college in the country itself and perform well, gain competence and then apply for a double masters’ in universities abroad. While this can be taxing, it escalates your chances significantly and make your application really strong and convincing, displaying your vigour and enthusiasm to learn.

We at Skill Maestro have provided admissions counseling to hundreds of students with this age-old story of the’ low GPA trap’, and have successfully enabled their applications to get selected at many reputed universities like North-Eastern University, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University etc.  You are always welcome!

About Skill Maestro At Skill Maestro, We guide prospective students about the entire application process as well as suitable universities as per their profile/test scores. We have consulted dozens of prospective students for MIS across the globe. We have a physical presence in Indore where we also help students prepare for GRE, GMAT & SAT Follow Us  on Google+!

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