Will these help me?

E

eastcoasterny

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I can get a reccomendation letter from AECOM’s senior vice president ; this company have affilations with the US Army,really hoping to know if this letter of reccomendation would benefit me.
 
Letter of such can't hurt for credibility. I would send it in.

Push Hard, Press Forward
 
eastcoasterny said:
I can get a reccomendation letter from AECOM’s senior vice president ; this company have affilations with the US Army,really hoping to know if this letter of reccomendation would benefit me.
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IMHO, only if the SVP know you well and can highlight, from personal experience, characteristics that would make you stellar cadet and officer in the USA. Cookie-cutter LoRs have much less impact on a candidates package (even if LoR is from a Cxx or high-ranking officer).
 
+1 to @FMHS-79. Colleges — civilian and SAs — don’t care for “name-dropping letters of recommendation.” So unless this SVP knows you well and can speak to your abilities because he/she has directly observed them, then don’t expect it to have any impact.
 
Yea, the SVP oversees 19 of us in his architecture engineering team alongside with his project manager on our architecture projects ; I hope to prove to him my abilities that my team(separated into groups from the 19) can establish a project that can bring all of us to D.C. for presentation. ( This SVP is really ‘big’ he was placed in charge of the 2012 Olympics design)
 
An LOR for Mrs. Small who has closer-in experience with you will mean far more than one from Mr. Big who has further-out experience with you. The level of detail in the letter will tell all.
 
eastcoasterny said:
Yea, the SVP oversees 19 of us in his architecture engineering team alongside with his project manager on our architecture projects ; I hope to prove to him my abilities that my team(separated into groups from the 19) can establish a project that can bring all of us to D.C. for presentation. ( This SVP is really ‘big’ he was placed in charge of the 2012 Olympics design)
Click to expand...
Kind of a side note, but is this the ACE program?
 
Truthfully, no one on this forum knows either way whether it will help; although you won't be able to tell that from their responses. If you think it will help and paint a favorable picture of you then I would submit it. As to whether it offers some "advantage", keep in mind that the majority of applicants that get to this point are all top performers and many will have similar letters.
 
A RC once said that LORs sent to WP are dropped in a file and not really looked at. Reason being, every LOR is going to sing praises about the candidate or else they would not be sending them. However, go ahead and send LORs in. WP doesn't mind getting them. It doesn't hurt, but don't expect it to help either.
 
West Point does not request LORs and they are not mandatory for your application.
No one knows the exact makeup of the WCS calculation, but it is safe to assume that something that is not required will have very little impact.
 
FWIW, I have a similar position at a competitor of AECOM. I cannot imagine a LoR from me regarding someone I don't know very well would have any impact compared to a direct supervisor. The fact that he is a Sr VP and does work for DoD IMHO has zero influence. None.
 
A Letter of Recommendation will help if it contains information that leads to additional WCS points or supports the candidate's competitiveness as an Additional Appointee - assuming the letter actually gets read and the information was not already captured in the formal application; that type of information will only come from a person who has worked closely with the candidate, although unlikely to contain information that was not already in the application. Such a letter may not help, but it won't hurt.

Do not try to use the stature of the writer in the hope that it will help, unless that person also falls into the category of knows the candidate well. It may be viewed as trying to work the system without the actual benefit of the presumed influence. Case in point: A woman on the Board of Trustees of an Ivy League university didn't want to jeopardize relationships by refusing to write recommendations, so she had a code with the admissions office. If she used the applicant's first name she was advocating on their behalf. Otherwise, she didn't care one way or the other. Not good to be one of those referred to as Mr. or Ms.

The bottom line is that if the letter comes from a person who knows the candidate well and can provide useful information, send it. Otherwise, do not send it.
 
My older DS USMA Class of 2017 wrote a letter of recommendation for his brother who is applying to the Class of 2023. He figured it couldn’t hurt, only help. We aren’t sure the family legacy will help but you never know....
 
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