Hello there! These two terms should mean the EXACT same thing. Ideally, you will have the person who works the closest with you, your current and direct supervisor, to write your rec. if he cant, and often that is impossible, then it is just fine. But ideally, you will find your current supervisor, who would also be your direct superviso. These are synonyms.
Hello there! These two terms should mean the EXACT same thing. Ideally, you will have the person wh ...
rebecw 发表于 2011-8-13 09:22
Thanks, Jon. But my supervior jumped to the competitor just after I've been in the current company for 2 months. And the national head of this consulting business line automatically turned to be my supervisor. However, she is kind of busy with the "high-end" management of the national business and does not participate much in my projects, and I'm afraid she may not be able to tell a lot about my work if she writes my rec.
I prefer to choose a senior consultant who was the project manager when I interned in another firm and who is now a project manager in my current firm and has supervised my work during several projects. He has witnessed my growth and accomplishment during previous years.
Can I choose him to write my LOR? How should I explain it to Adcoms? Is it a huge disadvantage if I do not have a rec written by the current supervisor?
Hey there—I agree with your perspective here. You should not use someone who only supervised you for two months, or someone who doesn’t know you well. If this means you are using someone else, even if from a different firm—that is just fine. Youll just need to explain this in your optional essay. Your logic is impeccable—you will just need to explain what youre doing and why, in your optional essay. And remember, that essay shouldn’t be longer than 300 words or so—if this is the only issue you are addressing, you should be able to do it in half that many. Hope this helps, and good luck!
By the way, talking about optional essay, is it a must to explain in that essay about the decline of my junior and senior year's academic performance? Or I'd better explain it in the optional essay, though it is not a must?
The best of my academic years lies in my sophomore year with GPA ranking as high as 3.8 or so (but each year's GPA will not be presented in the academic report), while my academic performance of junior and senior years is declining, and thus making an overall GPA of only 3.2, which is presented in the academic report.
I've heard that ending in worse academic performance than previous years will leave a bad impression on Adcoms...So do the Adcoms really care about that? If so, is there any way to compensate for that?
Some background info FYI:
——Acutually I didnot do well in some courses because I did not put my heart into it.
some reasons for not doing good in the last two years: 1) not mature, brought personal feelings to some classes, thus not doing good; 2) have taken jobs to support myself as the family has been under finance problems since my father started to establish his own business sine my junior year.
——When looking back, I really did a good job in my sophomore year when I like all the courses and there's no need for me to support myself as my father was still working in the local bank.
——Some make ups: 1) I did not do well in accounting, so I joined the ACCA (the largest international accounting association body) to learn by myself and have passed 8 courses out of 14. 2) I became more mature, not to bring personal feelings to classes, and learn to balance work and study when taking part-time job during grad study and finally got better results in graduate study with GPA of 3.67 (though a different major from undergrad). 3) My quant courses like maths have always been good and I have been doing quant-related analysis in my daily work.
Hey there—this is a GREAT question, and one that will need juuust a bit of “Tender Loving Care” in your essays. You should address this, but NOT in your optional essay. Why? Well it isn’t suuuuch a big deal really. if you address it in your optional essay, you would be drawing attention to something that isn’t such a problem. HOWEVER, here is where the art form of the optional essay kicks in—if you wanna NAIL this thing, you should address this issue, even just briefly, in an essay. Just allude to the fact that since you were doing this other stuff, supporting your family, running extra curriculars etc., you had a couple off years at school. That’s all—but do NOT write a whoooole optional essay about it—it will only detract from your overall application. Hope this helps. And good luck crafting your apps my friend!
So based on the two questions I posted in this thread, does that mean I only need to explain in the optional essay one thing--why I did not choose a direct supervisor to be my recommender?
And you mean I may allude to what I did during those years and why through other essays instead of addressing specifically in the optional essay about the decline of my last two years' academic performance?
Hey there—yes, you are correct. Simply explain why you did not choose your direct supervisor. One or two sentences should cover it, max. To your second question, YES. Explain what kept you so busy in your essays—and in just one sentence, allude to the fact that for a while, it affected your grades. No need to bring THAT up in your optional essay. Hard to say without reading it, but off hand it sounds like we wanna downplay the academics—maybe they wont even notice. Hope this helps, and good luck!
