Mr. Cricket From Kashmir

Everyone loves a cricket player. Seriously. Your passion for the sport spills from the page and clearly you know how to play the game. As odd as it may sound, that is a big asset for you at HBS, along with your experience in the energy business for a Fortune 500 company. The red flags here are obvious, however. You did not graduate from an IIT, the main Indian feeder into Harvard Business School. The Indian Institutes of Technology collectively provided 12 members of the MBA Class of 2020. NIT? None. Your 730 GMAT score, while at the class median, is low for a male, Indian engineer. So the big question is whether cricket and the discipline it required to compete at a national level and then your work experience will overcome those two weaker aspects of your application. Frankly, you seem far more passionate about sport than work, only noting that you worked in rural and urban areas of India and were responsible for $250 annual revenues early in your career. That’s just not enough for me to conclude you have good odds at HBS. I hope there is a lot more to say about your work experience, including a record of promotion and achievement. Because you will absolutely need to make a convincing case of your effectiveness at work to have a reasonable chance of admission to HBS.