1.    How Long have you known the Applicant and in what Capacity? *750 characters
I have known the applicant Mr. XXX xx for over 4 years in my capacity as the president of the School of Business, Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE).

2.    What do you consider to be His/Her strengths?* 750 characters
Mr. XXX achieved impressive academic excellence by being the top student in his class. He was also involved in research and has gained valuable research experiences. Even as an undergraduate student, he succeeded in publishing some research articles. He also took part in quite a few internships which prepared him well for a career in the industry and for assuming management responsibilities. In addition, he participated in numerous extracurricular activities in which he developed his leadership skills, apart from expanding his all-round personal qualities. He was outstanding not only as a student but also as a person.

3.    What do you consider to be His/Her main weaknesses?* 750 characters
Mr. XXX has received education primarily in finance. This knowledge is important, but since his career is to unfold in the business world by performing management responsibilities, his weakness becomes apparent—he lacks systematic training in the management as can be offered by a first-tier MBA programme. In addition, his knowledge as an undergraduate is quite fundamental and he should acquire more advanced knowledge to cope with the challenges of the rapidly changing business world in the future.

4.    How do you rate His/Her Academic Ability? If He/She is about to take any further examinations, what results do youanticipate He/She will achieve?* 750 characters
Mr. XXX has proved himself not only a top student with very high grades in his examinations. He has also performed research and was rightly a successful research student. His academic abilities are superb. I understand that he took the IELTS test a couple of years ago and got a very satisfactory score. If he is to take another test, I believe he will achieve a score 7.5 with much facility because he has always demonstrated a strong proficiency in English.

5.    How well do you think the applicant will respond to a very rigorous and intellectually demanding course?* 350 characters
Mr. XXX is the kind of student who can perform exceedingly well, however rigorous and intellectually demanding the course might be. He has strong academic initiative and commitment. He is hard-working and inquiring, with sound quantitative and analytical skills. He has valuable research experiences. He will be very successful in your programme.

6.    In what way do you believe the applicant will benefit from the course?* 350 characters
The course will give him systematic management theories and skills, expose him to major issues in management in a changing international environment, bring him into an extensive network of alumni, and allow him to meet the faculty who can give him special guidance in his interested field.

7.    What unique ability and experience do you believe the candidate could bring to the course?* 750 characters
Apart from being an outstanding student and currently a financial professional, Mr. XXX is an exceptional person—a composer, a player of different musical instruments, a sportsman, and a social work volunteer. He will contribute his talents to your student community, enrich your student life, and play a leadership role in all sorts of cultural events and exchanges, making the experiences of his fellow classmates most rich, rewarding and memorable.

8.    If you have any further comments which you consider would be helpful. Please use the following space, or attach a separate letter.

Dear University Admissions Committee:

In my capacity as the president of the School of Business, Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE), I would like to offer my utmost support to Mr. XXX xxx who is currently applying for admission into the Cambridge Master of Finance Programme. I hope that my detailed account of Mr. XXX can convince you that the applicant most worthy of the prestige of your esteemed programme.

Mr. XXX graduated from our university one and a half years ago. Like most of the faculty who had the chance to teach him, I am very proud of Mr. XXX. According to what we learned that year, Mr. XXX was the sole undergraduate student in the Chinese mainland to be hired by Morgan Stanley Hong Kong Headquarters. This was especially impressive considering the fact there are tens and thousands of finance graduates each year. His success story with such a top international company testifies to the extent to which we can produce high-quality graduates that can meet the most rigorous standards of world-class financial institutions.

At the School of Business, one of the strongest faculties within the university, Mr. XXX received the most comprehensive and systematic education, particularly in the modern investment bank such as asset management, risk management, derivatives pricing and trading, fixed income analytics and other areas where a quantitative background in theoretical and practical aspects of modern finance is essential. He also gained useful knowledge in corporate finance, dealing with the choice and financing of investment projects, firms’ determination of dividend policy, optimal capital structure, financial reorganization, mergers and acquisitions, deal structure, incentive design, valuation of high risk projects, initial public offerings, etc. According to Mr. XXX’s own account, such knowledge has been particularly useful to his profession.

Mr. XXX’s intellectual capacity was well recognized by both the faculty, who all enjoyed teaching him and discussing with him. They were all impressed by his powerful intelligence and his quick-mindedness in assimilating knowledge and developing a solid theoretical basis. Nothing seemed to pose any major difficulty for him, for he achieved the No. 1 academic performance in his class, with an average score of 88 in all the courses. In view of the competitive academic environment, this is truly an important achievement. This highest score in his class (consisting of 40 students) also ranked him among the top 3 in the entire grade, which comprised of about 150 students. His academic distinction brought him a first-class scholarship (limited to 3%) and a second-class scholarship (limited to 5%). Being well-read, he demonstrated strong understanding in the latest concepts and can often come up with perceptive and original observations when reflecting on the changing situations in the global financial industry.

As a finance student, Mr. XXX has sound quantitative skills. He studied courses in calculus, linear algebra, probability and mathematical statistics (obtaining an incredible grade of 98/100), and statistics. This sound foundation helped him achieve prominent performance in the rigorous internal training of Morgan Stanley, which covered various aspects of investment bank—industrial analysis, modeling, testing of the basic hypothesis of the valuation model, analysis of stock price fluctuations and keeping tract of the stock market indexes. This should constitute an important asset for him.

Passion is the exact word that can be used to describe how Mr. XXX sought to develop his practical caliber apart from his academic studies. Starting from the third semester, while most other students were still having a hard time dealing with their challenging coursework, Mr. XXX had the initiative to do internships at leading multinational companies. As such internship opportunities were rare, the applications were highly competitive, and applicants had to pass many round of difficult interviews and screening tests. The fact that, in summer and winter vacations, Mr. XXX was accepted by Morgan Stanley, American Citibank, and Standard Chartered Bank in Beijing and Tianjin branch officers was quite a legend on our campus. In those internships, he learned how to apply knowledge to practice. His internship at American Citibank coincided with important changes in China’s foreign exchange policy and his analytical research on the subject impressed the president of the Tianjin Branch, who invited him to host a seminar on the implications of those policy changes on the bank’s business in China.

In March 20XX, a research project sponsored by China National Development and Reform Commission on “The Business Expansion Strategies of Foreign Financial Institutions in China in the Post-WTO Period “ was launched and I was the leader of the CUFE research group. I recruited Mr. XXX and made him responsible for leading a team of students doing surveys and interviews. Under his leadership, the team interviewed CEO and senior managers of dozens of foreign financial institutions in five major cities across the country. With his internship experiences at some of those institutions, Mr. XXX had deep understanding of their business expansion strategies in China, which helped him gain useful first-hand information. His 10-month-long contributions helped to make our research a big success.

What distinguished Mr. XXX from his fellow students is his readiness to reflect on problems critically. This was nowhere more apparent than in the Bachelor’s thesis that he completed under my guidance. In his “The Present Situations and Problems in the Marketing Strategies of China’s Commercial Banks and Countermeasures”, he studied the problems in close comparison with the strategies of leading foreign financial institutions and tried to derive useful experiences that can shed light on the practices of Chinese banks. As a matter of fact, to critically examine important issues in the recent policies and practices by the central government was totally in keeping with his inquiring mind. He published a number of articles in China’s important newspapers and magazines like “The Implications of the Reforms in China’s Foreign Exchange Policies in the Wake of the Financial Crisis” and “Is China’s Pattern of Financial Stimulation Programme Too Tied to Textbook Doctrines?” In them, his original thinking and critical perspectives are fully demonstrated and for an undergraduate such a commitment to research is truly laudable.

Mr. XXX is very young, but he has rich academic, research and industrial experiences. By any standard, he is very phenomenal. That is why I am so unreserved in recommending this marvelous young man to your programme. He will be a valuable asset to your prestigious programme and he is bound for a high-achieving career in the financial industry. I hope that you share my comment and evaluation of the applicant and readily accept him into your programme.

Yours sincerely

XXX xx

Professor & Doctoral Supervisor
President of the School of Business
Central University of Finance and Economics
Special Advisor to China’s Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce, Mickinsey, BP