Dear customer,

Welcome to the December edition of ICON+’s MBA Access Newsletter. You are receiving this e-newsletter because you inquired about our test prep and/or admissions consulting services.

By now, you should have gotten the majority of your MBA application underway. However, you may still be fretting about soliciting a great Letter of Recommendation. In the feature article below, ICON+ has provided detailed ways to obtain that amazing Letter of Recommendation.

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Just when you thought the countless late nights you spent on your MBA applications were coming to a close - when you finally obtained your ideal GMAT score after weeks of drilling, trimmed your admissions essays to perfection, and tweaked your resume for the billionth time, you are hit with another crucial application task: soliciting great recommendation letters.

Why are Recommendation Letters Needed?

You think: Oh man - another sleepless week! Why do they even need references? Don’t they have gobs of information about me already from the rest of my application?

MBA officers are not just trying to throw another admissions hurdle your way (although one could argue that some adcoms are just a teeny bit sadistic). Recommendation letters do serve a very worthwhile purpose: They provide another, more objective perspective into your potential as an MBA student and business leader. Say you’ve claimed to be a hotshot team leader with exceptional cross-cultural, communication, and technical skills on your essay. Or, you said you were instrumental in doubling revenues for your department. Well, the admissions committee wants to know if your version of the truth or your perception of your competencies is shared by the people around you.

Therefore, although the recommendation letters should not replicate every message and narrative you wrote in your essays, there should be some common themes that tie the entire application together. If you have branded yourself in your essay as a coalition builder with expertise in the Southeast Asian business landscape, your recommendations should also highlight these points.

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GRE stands for Graduate Record Exam, for graduate level academic study. The GRE is a requirement for admission to graduate and business schools at both the Ph.D.and Master’s levels. More and more MBA programs are now accepting the GRE as an equivalent to the GMAT.

The GRE is nicely split into three main sections. The first is analytical writing, in which you are expected to complete two written essays. This section is used to measure your ability to articulate complex issues as well as your critical thinking and analytical writing skills.

The further two sections include Quantitative reasoning and Verbal reasoning, both of which are conducted in multiple choice format. During the quantitative reasoning section, they want to gauge your ability to solve multifaceted problems and provide solutions. In the verbal reasoning section, they test your aptitude to analyze and evaluate written passages.

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Vocabulary is hardly everyone’s idea of fun! Yet to ace the IELTS examination, you will need to put some work into learning a variety of vocabulary. Try not to view this exercise as learning a bunch of new words you are never going to use again. Instead, if you can imagine the English language as a piece of art, new words will add to the vibrancy and beauty of your work. The more diverse your English vocabulary is, the more beautifully you will be able to speak it! Furthermore, acquiring vocabulary will help enrich your education, personal and professional life!   Broadening your vocabulary is a time consuming process, so I’ve concocted a few different methods to improve vocabulary learning and finally boost your IELTS score.

·         Absorb the knowledge around you - The best way to start is to embrace the English language in your surroundings. So read as much as you can in English, listen to new words you hear on your favorite American TV drama. Immersing yourself in the language without putting on subtitles, will stretch your vocabulary. Pick up an English newspaper, magazine or book. Anything you don’t understand, write down to look up later.

·         Buy a notebook - Treat yourself to a new notebook, something to carry with you at all times! This way, when you come across a new word, you can jot it down. Try and guess the meaning of the word in its context. Later in the day, look up the meaning of the word, then try to use it in a sentence. If you’re a visual learner, you could even draw an image to help remind you of the meaning. After a couple weeks, you should have accumulated a decent vocabulary list of the words you were interested in!

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