US National Lab Engineer Job help for MFE Acceptance?

[rangersfan]

Hi everyone,

I applied to a couple MFE programs for the Spring of this year with no luck. I studied geophysics (geophysical engineering), had a low gpa (2.9), and didn't do as well as needed on GRE (318, 161 Q). I just accepted a Job at a national lab as a subsurface energy recourse engineer. Will this be a good step in improving my candidacy for the Fall 2026 cycle (I will have 1 year of experience) or do they prefer financial work experience? I will work on modeling natural gas and hydrogen reservoirs using inversion and machine learning models. Inversions are just models which use observed data to attempt to explain why said recorded data exists, like using a seismic wave velocity to interpret subsurface geology without physically observing the geology. Lots of PDFs, stochastic calculus involved w wave propagation. Please let me know what you think.

Best

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Your low GPA and GRE Q did not make the cut. Use this work experience and time to properly prepare for next year. You need to show you can take courses and do well to overcome the old GPA.
Follow @grxthy plan for Fall 2026 and take all the courses needed to strengthen your profile. This is the right way to prepare if you are serious about making it in this competitive industry.

 

[Andy Zhang]

I will work on modeling natural gas

Very relevant for quant work in energy and commodities. I'm not familiar with the other stuff.