Chances/Choices

Question

hi Paul

Would you mind evaluating? 
Brief stats:

Short-term Goals Post MBA: strategic management within an oil company
Long-term Goals Post MBA: corporate energy exploration and production technology ventures
GMAT: Pending, assuming 7XX
GPA: M.Sc. in Geophysics from a top 3 Canadian university (3.3GPA) B.Sc. in Geological Sciences from top international university (78%).
WE: 4 in oil exploration (currently living in Texas), deployments throughout North America, Middle East, Kazakhstan. 4-5 peer review scientific publications and conference presentations.
Nationality: Canadian
Age: 29
Gender: M
Extra-curriculars/community: lots during undergrad (Red Cross, UNICEF, student publication). Also worked 15-20 hours a week during undergrad. Not much now - busy at work (traveling 100 days a year)
Languages: 2

School choices (in order of preference):
Wharton/Lauder, MIT, Chicago, Yale, Columbia/Kellogg, Cornell.

So what do you think of my choices? Would you add/subtract any? What are my chances with these schools?

Thanks,
sarzan

Accepted.com · Answer

Sarzan,

Fairly distinctive profile. Given the level of schools you're targeting I'm concerned that your lack of recent extracurricular/community may hold you back at Wharton/Lauder, MIT, Chicago, Yale, and Columbia. I would not bother applying to Kellogg for that reason, and you may have a shot at Cornell even despite that weakness. Consider adding Texas. Your age is a minor weakness, but a weakness nonetheless. You need to find some way to show them that even given your travel schedule you're not "all work."

Good luck,

sarzan · Answer

Thanks for your feedback Paul.

As for EC's, do you think it would be too "late" to get involved in something now? Would the AdComms see right through it? And even if they did, would that actually work against me?

To be honest with you, I really do not know how some people appear to be so career oriented, and still have time to do all the things they list on their resumes. There are weeks when I work 80 hours, and sometimes I don't even have time to take a vacation. I don't know about the rest of the applicants, but from the moment I wake up, I only get 24 hours in a day.

I'm on vacation now with some family members who got their MBAs at Columbia, and they told me that they "exaggerated" (in other words, lied) about some of their ECs. I have never done that, and I do not want to. Everyone in this forum seems to speak about the crazy hours of investment bankers, and yet when they apply to b-schools, they appear to have had the time to saving kids in African villages. Add to that family, gym, and even getting groceries, I'm left with 6 hours of sleep.

I know this is sounding like a rant I give my mother, and I know I have to fine the time somehow, but I just have a feeling that some applicants are simply "exaggerating" their ECs, which makes it harder for some honest applicants.

Also, I have a lot of friends who graduated from European schools, and unlike North American schools, which in my opinion are a bit EC obsessed, the European students don't appear to be as community conscience. My colleagues from China and India appear to be even less community involved, and that in my opinion, is not because they don't care. I was raised in a third world country, and the extreme competition meant that the only way out of those countries was by working hard at school and finding jobs in the West.

I understand from what you wrote that I need to appear "not all work", but this work that I do, of finding oil, is the reason I am working in the oil Mecca of the world, Houston. It is not because I volunteered with the Red Cross when I was a Sophomore at college.

The application competition reminds of the performance drugs scandal with the Major League Baseball - if everyone's on roids, and the "average" player becomes a hulk superhuman, then do you just sit there and not do it? And likewise, with some MBA's who already graduated from some of the M7 schools, who blatantly lied about their community involvement, do I just join something, anything, just to have something to talk about? And even if they have been volunteering for the last couple years, how many of these volunteers were truly doing it for the sake of these so called African kids and not their business school applications?

I know you do not have the answers to these questions, as they are personal ethical issues. I was just sitting here wondering if I could slow the Earth's rotation by a couple hours a day to fit in some community involvement simply for my applications. And the notion of the slight BS nauseated me because I anticipate that the experience might not be genuine. And yet, I have a feeling that it might even be too late in the game to take something on because the AdComms might think: This is just a last minute resume filler.

Cheers,
sarzan

Accepted.com · Answer

sarzan,

As for whether starting some EC now would hurt or helps your chances, I think schools care more about the quality and impact of the EC you do than the reason why you did it. That said, I do think that several years of noninvolvement would mean you would have to find some EC that's pretty unusual and your impact would have to be pretty amazing to really improve your chances that much. So perhaps the best answer for you is to not aim at the very top U.S. schools, but instead aim lower on the list where the strengths you do have are strong enough to get you in, and/or to focus on European schools where the EC emphasis is not so huge. A lack of EC involvement is not an absolute deal-breaker at all schools.

As for exaggerating versus lying, I'm sure a fair number of applicants do the former and probably get away with it. But making up an EC involvement out of thin air and trying to pass that off on the adcoms would be a really bad idea, and I doubt many applicants are stupid enough to try that.

One thing you could do is to use your essays to explain to the adcom what you just explained to me (without the negative stuff about other applicants), i.e., that you come from a third world country and that you are in an unusually demanding career. You could also say, if this is true, that you see your career and post-MBA goals as having a social impact dimension already, so that's where you have channeled your urge to get involved, etc.

Good luck,

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