Upon November 30, 2009, the Business School has introduced a new system to request a letter of recommendation. The aim is to quickly and straightforwardly carry out the requests from students for a letter of recommendation.

The most important change consists of the fact that the letter of recommendation is not requested directly from the respective chairs anymore, but centrally from the dean’s office of the Business School. This procedure applies to all chairs of the Business School. Letters of recommendation from other schools, as e.g. the School of Law & Economics, have to be requested independently at the respective institution. For letters of recommendation concerning PhD programs, please also contact the chairs directly. 

In principal, there is a distinction between three different kinds of letters of recommendation:

1. Letter of recommendation for exchange students (study abroad at a partner university)
2. Letter of recommendation for freemovers
3. Letter of recommendation for Master programs, grants and ESSEC double degrees

Further information concerning the different kinds of letters of recommendation and the respective application process can be found below.

In order to apply for a letter of recommendation, you have to have studied at the University of Mannheim for at least one semester. Only when objective criteria (as e.g. grades) are available, a professor can issue a letter of recommendation.

Please note: the preparation of a letter of recommendation takes at least 14 to 21 days. Your request with all necessary documents must be received at least four weeks before the expiration of a potential deadline. Hence, you should plan enough time for your requests to be carried out, in order to avoid any conflict with application periods (especially during the semester break or vacation time the preparation of a letter of recommendation can take longer than 14 days). Please notify us in this context of possible application periods or deadlines.

Please contact Mister Jürgen Kern of the dean’s office of the Business School if you have any questions:
gutachten(at)dekanat.bwl.uni-mannheim.de

In the course of a study abroad at a partner university of the business school (for one or two semesters), you will possibly need a letter of recommendation (depending on the respective partner university, however only two letters at most).

These letters of recommendation present only a formality. It is irrelevant which courses you have already attended and which record you have of these courses. The letters are solely prepared by the course adviser (Studiendekan), respectively by the dean of the Business School. This guarantees that you receive the required letters for the partner university quickly and easily.

Procedure:

Please fill out the online application form. It is a standardized procedure and does not require any further actions of you. On the basis of your provided information, a letter of recommendation will be prepared and signed by the course adviser (Studiendekan). After the signing has taken place, the letters for overseas universities will be sent directly to the International Office (Akademisches Auslandsamt). For exchange programs within Europe, you can pick up your letter of recommendation directly at the dean’s office of the Business School.  

Applications for Master programs or a grant usually require a letter of recommendation. Please consider: for an application for a master program you can request five letters of recommendation in total from each chair. The application for a place in the ESSEC Double Degree Program requires two letters.

Procedure:

1. Fill out the online application form.
2. Send an email with the following content to gutachten(at)dekanat.bwl.uni-mannheim.de:
   • name of the university for which you would like to apply
   • detailed information which (formal) requirements the letter of recommendation has to meet
   • application deadlines and closing dates
   • send us your current transcript of records, rankings and CV (also digitally via email)
   • please give information concerning your motivation
   • please let us also know which chair/s you would prefer (please give a justification, attended course, course results/grade). We will try our best to assign the requested chair to you. However, it might be possible that we will have to direct your request to a different chair. In that case, we will send you an email to explain this decision
   • please inform the Dean's Office of the Business School at gutachten(at)dekanat.bwl.uni-mannheim.de if your application has been successful.
3. Mister Kern will consider your application and will suggest an appropriate chair. He will refer you to the respective contact person, who will discuss the following steps with you.