Breaking Through The Elite MBA Screen

Mr. Oil Driller

  • 690 GMAT (will retake)
  • 3.3 GPA
  • Undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Mumbai
  • Work experience as a project leader with Halliburton Offshore Services for the past 16 months, managing a group of up to ten people, and for the prior ten months with ITS Energy Services, another oil field company, where he had been promoted to sales engineer
  • Extracurricular involvement as a member of my university’s cricket team, president of the engineering students’ association, leader of several college festivals, participant in intercollegiate quizzes and fashion shows
  • 25-year-old male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 10%

Dartmouth: 20% to 30%

Duke: 20% to 50%

Michigan: 20% to 50%

Yale: 20% to 40%

Texas: 50+%

Virginia: 50+%

ISB: 30+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Oil and gas guys are the same black box to B school adcoms as the military — and that includes guys working for the majors such as Shell and Exxon/Mobil or the service companies such as Halliburton and Schlumberger. Adcoms have very little idea what you actually do (assuming you are not in corporate development in the home office). Everyone has stories about working on rigs with lots of people from different countries, many of whom are low-paid laborers, and dealing with emergencies, cultural diversity, and alleged marvels of increased production brought about by your hands-on expertise.

Thus, very often, like the military, issues like GPA and GMAT and even extras, schooling and pedigree of any kind really count since you actual experience gets homogenized.  The oil and gas Desis who get into Harvard Business School frequently went to IIT or other top Indian schools and have real high GPA and GMATs as well as some X factor like super-duper recommendations from someone who can write one, or powerful extras, or just 10% less than that and some luck. You are off that model by more than 10% since you got a lower GPA, started at a non-blue chip company, ITS Energy Services (well, seems non-blue chip to me, I’m no expert and I hope I am not insulting anyone), seemed to have changed jobs rather quickly, and extras like quizzing and fashion are not impactful in this game.

I realize quizzing is a big deal in India, but adcoms don’t get it. And if they do, they merely view it like intramural athletics: something you do for yourself and not others.  Also, as you perceive, the 690 GMAT is not helping you fight above your weight, either. I’m not sure how Mumbai U stacks up in the Indian school hierarchy, but it is not IIT. So I ain’t seeing this as HBS.

At other schools you note, this begins to look a lot better because Halliburton is a well-known company, your GPA and GMAT numbers begin to fall into their range, and hey, it looks like you will get a job back in the energy patch when you graduate, given your background. All that puts you in the running there. Get a 730 GMAT and get lucky, and you could maybe slip into Wharton, even though you did not ask.

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