Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Mr. American Loving Europe

• 710 GMAT
• 3.91 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in software engineering from a public Ivy
• Work experience includes 2.5 years as a software engineer at a major defense contractor
• Extracurricular involvement in the men’s choir at school, teaching foreign students English, and raising money for the college’s pediatric cancer treatment fund
• Fluent in Russian and Brazilian Portuguese and learning German and French
• Goal: To work in either a managerial or consulting role in the high-tech industry
• 25-year-old American male looking exclusively at business schools in Europe because “I would like to work in an international context”

Odds of Success:

ESADE: 50+%

IE: 50+%

IESE: 50+%

HEC: 50+%

INSEAD: 30% to 50%

St. Gallen: 60+%

Mannheim: 60+%

Sandy’s Analysis: I’m not a super expert at Euro schools, but I do believe, 1. They LOVE American students (although, maybe not Americans in general), 2. Your stats (3.9 and 710) are in top 20 percent of most Euro B-schools. Add in language ability, tech skills and savvy-sounding goals, and you should be a real solid shot at all the schools you mention.

The only clouds in your story are working for a defense contractor (some of those Euro places view that as working for the devil) and the fact that some Euro schools run older. But four years of work experience should satisfy almost everyone. You may need to do some explaining as to why you want to go to school in Europe, especially if you want to work in the U.S. post-grad. That can be odd. One person to whom it is odd, in fact, is me.

And frankly, I do not recommend it. It just makes getting a job in the U.S. harder, and will require you to face a lot of questions about why you went to school in Europe. I throw this out to our readers, but my belief is that most U.S. schools will offer you as much, if not more, international context, than Euro schools, which may be LESS international in terms of class diversity and especially places where students get jobs.

You can go to a U.S. school and travel a lot as part of your regular program. Foreign travel is now built into HBS’ first-year field program and similar programs at other U.S. schools. Moreover, high-tech consulting, your stated goal, is an American gig. If you applied to McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group or Bain from a Euro school, they might push you into a Euro office, which is dealing with railroads and ports. Just saying. I’d really rethink this, case for Europe you state does not make sense.