Handicapping Your Elite MBA Odds

Mr. Big Oil

• 680 GMAT
• 3.78 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from UT-Austin
• Work experience includes three years at Shell as a drilling engineer
• Extracurricular involvement as president of Pi Tau Sigma, the mechanical engineering honor society, as well as vice president and service coordinator; teaching assistant and undergraduate research assistant, tutor during college, captain of intramural basketball team, played flag football, soccer and softball at UT over four semesters
• Goal: To become a vice president or director in the oil/gas or finance industry
• 24-year-old biracial male who lived in Korea for 13 years

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 40%

MIT: 40% to 50%

Chicago: 40% to 50%

Dartmouth: 50%

Yale: 50%+

Texas: 50%+

Rice: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: Dude, this one is easy. A 3.78 in mechanical engineering from UT Austin (a fine feeder school), three years at Shell as a drilling engineer (not Schlumberger which is where many oil guys come from, so another small plus), president of mechanical engineering honor society, and bi-racial–so far you can get in anyplace. Schools love Big Oil guys, especially U.S. citizens, since many oil applicants are Indians (Schlum by way of IIT or BITS). The 680 is a nick below average, if you can get that up to a 720, and execute serviceably, you are really inline at your target schools (Wharton, Sloan, Booth, Tuck, Yale, McCombs, Rice) and you should throw one into HBS as well. They take guys with this profile.

“Goal: to be a VP or Director in the oil/gas or finance industry”

Drop finance as an industry you interested in, that would be suicide and mark you as a guy who is sick of energy who wants to be rich.  Say you want to be an innovative, principled and big-change leader in energy busniess, like Messrs 1 2 3 (find some people like that on Google).

The challenges are huge and crucial. The new CEO of Shell, for instance,  Ben van Beurden, as profiled in the New York Times, is facing these challenges:

Shell differs from other major oil companies like BP by stressing big long-term projects that lack the tremendous potential financial rewards of oil exploration but produce steady returns with lower risk.

Liquefied natural gas tends to earn returns in the relatively modest 10 to 15 percent range  . . .but it produces steady cash flows  . . . Shell has invested around $40 billion in the business in recent years. It hopes to cash in on growing use of gas in China and other developing countries.

It is also one of the few companies that is investing large sums in gas-to-liquids plants, the monster installations required to transform natural gas into fuels like diesel. And it is the leader in the still-unproved technology of building gigantic floating vessels to process liquefied natural gas in remote locations. In an industry where access to oil and gas is increasingly competitive, Shell hopes a demonstrated ability to design and manage megaprojects will give it a competitive advantage.

A DEMONSTRATED ABILITY TO DESIGN AND MANAGE MEGAPROJECTS!!!

Friend, that is adcom porn.

Just spread some of that around your app, along with some responsible talk about conservation, and you will get in. Retake the GMAT.

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