Do business school admissions commitees contact your letter of reference authors?

Answer 1

A couple of schools (University of Michigan Law School is one) wrote me a thank you letter for recommendations that I sent for some of my undergraduate students who were applying to graduate schools. No one ever contacted me for more information.

That doesn't mean they don't do any checks of references. It would have been easy for them to verify that I was on the faculty of the school where I was teaching.

Answer 2

in general, if a letter if pretty ordinary and doesn't make any unusual claims, a university would have no particular reason to check to make sure that it was authentic.

But, say a student had a C in English class and there was a letter from the English teacher telling how great that kid was. Wouldn't you get suspicious?

Most schools have admissions officers who are assigned to a certain region, so after a couple year they get to know who the teachers are in the schools in their area, and they can probably recognize the style and signature on a letter from your school -- after all, they probably see ten of them a year.

And if someone faked a letter and the school somehow found out about it, the student involved would definitely get thrown out of school. Can you imagine spending $50,000 or so to do a year or two in school and then they throw you out and print "expelled" on your transcipt. That would be a serious downer.