to those who are known well if you can get both well then thats just perfect but its extremely important to have the former this is because your letters must have detail and shouldnt be full of empty platitudes jain advises select a person who knows you well and do not chase designations it is not important to get a reference from the principal or the dean or the president of the company they may be important people but if they write just a few generic lines it doesnt help you they must detail your abilities and strengths in different situations and describe your potential as an academic student as well niyogi advises a graduate school applicant should send three strong letters of recommendation whereas an undergraduate applicant may send two teacher references from his high school any additional recommendation should be sent only if the applicant was involved with some specific activity that is significant like competitive sport community service and so on zavitz corroborates these views saying the admissions committee wants to learn about you from two independent people who know you and your work we prefer recommendations from people who can speak directly about your aptitude for or accomplishments in leadership and management thus workrelated recommendations are more valuable than academic ones work experience the resum is a series of crisp pointers of your academic and professional history and may especially be important if youre applying to an mba programme because most students arrive with some professional experience under the belt as rosemaria martinelli associate dean student recruitment and admissions university of chicago booth school of business says work experience is very important for students to have baseline experiences to contribute to the classroom discussion and fully leverage the mba experience what must your resum demonstrate zavitz clarifies what we evaluate is not a function of the number of years you have been in the work place but what you have learned we consider skills acquired breadth and depth of experience leadership andor management skills as well as potential for growth koh adds it is important that the resum clearly communicates what an applicant has done particularly his or her impact and contributions within an organisation it should not simply describe ones responsibilities it should focus on results highlighting how you should present your resum niyogi says it is important to have clarity in the presentation of facts and data it should be easy to segment easy to read and should always be presented in reverse chronological order ie most recent activity listed first keep it brief and crisp more importantly please dont exaggerate or lie as jain says it is very easy to detect artificial additions interviews its rare for interviews to be conducted at the undergraduate level but at the graduate level most mba programmes like to conduct an informal interview this can be conducted either by telephone or video chat or sometimes one on one interviews by alumni of the business school