F1GMAT's MBA Essay Editing Service - Demonstration 

Case Study #1: Private Equity Associate

Due diligence skills or managing a portfolio company is the most repeated essay narrative in PE.

To stand out, you must find hidden leverage, contracts negotiated on handshakes, and other nuances only a professional in PE  knows.

The lines should feel authentic.

Sample Essay – Due Diligence Details (PE Associate)

💬 Three weeks into a due diligence work on a Texas HVAC roll-up, the contracts confirmed the effort that went behind the deal – five-year terms, a clean quality-of-earnings report, and an independent review that confirmed the seller’s numbers.

What bothered me was one billing detail💬

The revenue the model treated as contracted was mostly out-of-scope projects that were renewed by the relationship the seller had with one contractor.

On paper, the contracts were airtight, but the contributions of that one contractor covered half of the projected cash flow.

💬 I raised the issue, and I was corrected that customers rarely switch brands after a brand acquisition. 

I shared that every testimonial had Dave’s name and not the seller’s brand name. These were real testimonials the seller collected in a recording.

He was a minority shareholder.

The moment the company was acquired and Dave exits, the customers will search for new suppliers to service their HVAC. The seller was just a glorified contractor.

I asked my manager to make a reference call myself with current customers. This was not a practice associates made in my role.

It was a risk, because if the call came back with no red flags or I assumed the worst, the goodwill of our sellers and the customers would be affected.

I delicately covered three projects with the customer, and all of them hinted at exploratory calls to find new HVAC service providers once Dave, the 62-year-old founder of the sub-contracting company, exited.

The 25 calls that spread across three days were my sample size, but it unequivocally showed that my assumptions were right.

We had overvalued the target company based on a stable cash flow, which was at risk💬.

I built the counter-offer to cut the price.

Their banker called it an insult to a man who had built the business.

We nearly lost the deal twice over the next month.

In one call, Dave walked away.

The high-strung emotions flustered me initially, but I had done my research.

To sweeten the deal and recognize Dave’s role in the company’s valuation, we added a clause that gave him a higher earnout than the clean sale would have had.

💬 I still see Dave in our quarterly investor meetings. He had exited from the day-to-day operations as we had anticipated.

Two years on, the acquisition is one of my strongest contributions💬..

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Case Study #2: Story Archetype in Stanford MBA What Matters Essay

Sample Stanford MBA What matters most to you, and why? – Story Archetype That Works (Oil and Gas) (Engineering to Finance)

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Note: This is a first draft essay to illustrate the story archetype used by Oil and Gas applicants. Don't use it in your Stanford MBA application. They are shared for educational purposes only.

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MBA Resume Entry: "Built a waterflood optimization model for a mature Permian (Wolfcamp) field at 10,400 feet that raised the recovery factor from 9% to 12%, adding 14 million barrels of recoverable reserves, roughly $140M in NPV, and extending the field's economic life by nine years."

💬 What matters most to me is to bring sustainable and affordable energy to future generations.

Over the years, I have become good at creating models that spot oil reserves two miles below the rocks.

I didn't have much of a choice 💬

💬From the moment my grandfather kept his first drill bit on the mantel, I would shadow around his drill work and name the parts of the pumpjack before I could name half the state capitals. I was only 5, but the barrel of oil meant so much to my grandfather. His father – a rancher who had given up on the cotton sale woke up one day collecting a check that erased all his debt and kept some more for my grandpa. He bought the adjacent ranch with that single lucky exploration. The royalty was one-eighth in those days. Grandpa took me to these dry oil wells on our land with gleaming eyes.

I proudly continued the legacy of changing lives and communities in Texas. Energy independence meant the farmers and ranchers don't have to worry about the input costs 💬. My work on a recovery model extended the exploration of the Permian Basin field by nine years 💬. That same afternoon, my sister sent me a photograph. 💬

A gutted pumpjack – the one grandpa treasured 💬

I was devastated. The hours of my childhood memories were no longer recoverable. Worst - 144,000 acres across the panhandle in February 2024 were charred to the ground.

Windy Deuce Fire, which started at an oil field in Moore County on the same afternoon as Smokehouse Creek began at the ignition point of a pumpjack, which was powered through faulty wires.

When the wind moved the limbs against the energized lines, the contact ignited a spark.

When unregulated greed is passed along as opportunities in communities, devastation follows.

The pumpjack's power lines were wired by oil and gas operators, outside the state's purview.

After the oil boom, the communities were looking for any sources of income to sustain the legacy of these once oil-rich towns. It didn't matter if they were illegal 💬

I had to think beyond my individual accomplishments.

What was I doing for my community?

I had become good at integrating systems and processes that limit carbon emission in our exploration and kept a 100% safety record in our oil rigs, but for communities spread outside the federal purview, safety is secondary 💬

Attending the emissions-reduction working group, I learned that the same reservoir modeling used to find oil could locate the best rock for storing carbon dioxide underground with a technique called sequestration.

I proposed a small change to how we scheduled well completions to cut flaring and store carbon underground. It was approved for two fields and refused for a third on cost.

The same cost excuse let the unregulated oil explorers cut corners and burn down my grandpa's legacy 💬

I am the fourth generation of my family to make a living from this land. 💬

Cost, a variable I have no influence over, is everything in the energy business.

I need skills I do not have yet to allocate capital in energy storage and create risk frameworks that protect communities.

💬 What matters most to me is to protect the land and the sea that have given us so much.

💬 The time has come to create the financial framework to bring sustainable energy to future generations.