Profile:
33 caucasin male
Born in USA
Currently in Texas
Undergrad: Petroleum Engineering, minor in business (GPA: 2.986)
GRE 321 (taking again in 7 weeks)
I have some health conditions that hurt my undergrad performance (was in hospital the week before finals more than once), but I was able to get it under control and did much better by earning honor roll and dean’s list the last 3 semesters.
Work Experience:
10 years experience as an engineer in oil industry
Engineering team lead for two years 2018-2020, had to layoff a number of my direct reports in 2020 due to downturn in oil industry
Forced back to individual contributor technical role (many leaders encountered the same fate due to redundant positions) following a corporate merger in late 2020
Worked for small, medium, and large global companies
Extra Curricular:
Due to above noted health conditions I have not been able to pursue extra curricular activities while working full time (out of necessity to prioritize my health and work performance)
During undergrad I was a sport club president
Post MBA Goals:
As a team lead I learned that I would prefer to move to strategy and focus more on business aspects of energy sector
I want to move out of a technical role and am also interested in moving towards alternative energy industry
I want to move to a position where I can lead the energy transition and sit at the intersection of business, operations, and policy, and use my technical experience to lead in a practical manner
Target Schools:
MIT Sloan, Northwestern Kellogg, UC Berkeley Haas, Duke Fuqua, Texas McCombs
Plan to apply R1 to all four
Questions:
Does my health condition help to minimize the impact of the low GPA, also considering I did much better in the last few semesters when I got health under control?
Does the fact that I was forced back to an individual contributor role after being in leadership hurt me? How should I address this if so?
Does my age/years of experience hurt me? Part of the reason for waiting until now for MBA was also related to the health condition.
Generally, do you think my profile is competitive at these schools? What could make it stronger?