Here it is, hopefully possible_phd does not mind.
Program: Quantitative marketing
Age: 26
Sex: Male
Nationality: US citizen
GMAT: 710, 93% - 48Q (85%), 40V (89%), 6.0 AWA.
I will probably retake this, because I'm just not convinced that it will cut it. I know some say that domestic students might get by with lower scores and that I am near the average for most schools, but that's not much consolation to me, even with my rigorous undergrad program.
Undergrad: Nuclear engineering from good State school, 3.50 (overall and last two years) - cum laude (was on a full scholarship + small book stipend)
I obviously took a lot of math, but I got a C+ in Calc III and withdrew once from Differential Equations (I got an A when I retook it). The reason for this was the same in both cases -- horrible instructors. I couldn't understand either of them because they could barely speak English. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a nationalist, anti-immigrant kinda guy at all: my girlfriend is from Taiwan! It's just that I can't learn calculus from somebody I can't understand. I am not exaggerating or making excuses when I say that nearly half the students dropped the calc course by the end of the semester. One of my friends could not drop it (he had used up his drops), and he ended up failing the course. He took it again the next semester with another professor and got an A!!! What does that tell you? Unfortunately, these things aren't made clear on transcripts, and I am certainly not going to level this complaint in my application! I'll just have to hope that they can look past it.
Grad: MBA from top 20 program, we don't have a GPA - Honors ($36k scholarship)
Looking at my transcript, my "grades" (we don't really have "grades") might not look that great, but it's a little misleading. I had medical issues that negatively impacted me after my first semester, but I still graduated with Honors and was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma. As a matter of fact, the whole reason I ever even considered a PhD was because a professor there recommended it to me unsolicited; I had never even thought about it before.
Work experience (as unimportant as it is): 2 years as a nuclear engineer doing safety analysis; 1 year post-MBA doing management consulting for the energy industry.
Teaching experience: TA for MBA and BBA marketing intelligence course
Research experience: None, though I did participate in a marketing PhD seminar at my MBA school for a couple months. I eventually had to leave the course because my MBA time demands and job hunting conflicted with it. The course was once a week on Fridays, but job interviews were often scheduled at the same time! I just could not make the two work, unfortunately.
LOR: I know of 2 right away that would be strong. Both are very involved in research. One is an Assistant Prof in marketing (PhD from Cornell) who first gave me the idea to pursue the PhD. The other is an Associate Prof in what is essentially a decision sciences group (PhD from UT-Austin). For those schools requiring 3 letters, I have another Assistant Prof in marketing (PhD from Pitt) lined up if I need it, but she might not be that great a reference if only because she eventually decided to go non-tenure track and doesn't do a lot of research anymore. I'm kind of concerned about that one.
Research interests: Discrete choice models, Bayesian statistics, and decision making, particularly in a certain area.
Schools in consideration: The usual suspects across the top few tiers: Northwestern, Cornell, MIT, Duke, USC, UT-Austin, OSU, Maryland, Emory, Florida, etc. Because of my middle-of-the-pack stats, I'm really not all that confident. I will narrow down my schools to a more manageable list later, once I dig deeper into the faculty and their interests. I guess I will follow a strategy similar to what others here have done before, applying to X schools in the tippity top, Y schools in the next tier, and Z schools below that. I'm thinking X+Y+Z will have to total to around 10 or so. I don't want my recommenders to be spending forever writing letters and filling out forms, and I also don't want to be dropping like $1,500 on applications. But honestly? I also don't know how much rejection I can handle!
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Originally Posted by possible_phd
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