Top PhD in Strategy / International Business?

[mikebike]

Hi there,

I am a European student with the following characteristics:

-Undergrad in Business Admin (Top 10%)
-US Exchange Term (GPA 3.9/4)
-MSc International Management at LSE/Duke
-Havent taken GRE yet: GMAT math section was about 90% (which would equal about 780 in GRE math, right!?)

I would like to attend a PhD Programme in the US or UK focusing on strategy or international business.

What schools would you suggest? They should provide tuition and scholarship to a large extent if possible and have good job prospects.

Thanks for your help!

mikebike

[Bloomsbury]

Where did you get your undergrad ?
Do you have research experience ?
Which topics are you interested in ?

[mikebike]

hi,
the undergrad degree is from a top 3 university in the german speaking area.
unfortunately, i do not have research experience besides my thesis and other research assignments as part of the regular course. it is very uncommon to be involved in such issues at my university. might this be a problem? how can I compensate that?
my research interests are in strategic management subjects such as corporate strategy, resource-based view, industrial organization,...
does that help?
thanks!!!

[Bloomsbury]

I think you have a good curriculum.
Thesis is research experience, you should stress that. Your lack of research experience might hurt, but not much if you highlight your papers.
You don't need to pass the GRE, GMAT should be enough.
I think you should aim the top level programs. LBS might be hard to reach but you can try. In the US you should pick a few big names and top 50 schools.

[MagicNo.]

As Bllomsbury said try some top ones. This is what comes to my mind right away with strategy focus: College Park, Stern, UCLA, Fuqua, Chaple Hill, Wharton, Chicago's Booth.

[moomber123]

Originally Posted by MagicNo.

As Bllomsbury said try some top ones. This is what comes to my mind right away with strategy focus: College Park, Stern, UCLA, Fuqua, Chaple Hill, Wharton, Chicago's Booth.

I found this list a bit odd. There is a big distinction between a top MBA program that has a strong strategy focus vs. a good research program that places their graduates well in the strategy field.

I agree with Fuqua, probably the best strategy PhD program now IMHO, and Wharton, but none of the other you listed are particularly well known for top strategy people now. UCLA used to be a top strategy place, but their "star" strategy people are all very senior and aren't operating at the volume they used to. Have not seen any UCLA articles in top strategy journals for quite sometime now. (If UCLA is included for people like Rumelt, then why not Berkeley? They've got Williamson and Teece. But just like UCLA, I believe they are also quite senior and probably aren't as active as they used to be.)

Chicago's inclusion seems particularly inappropriate for strategy. Make no mistake, Chicago's PhD program is by no means anything less than ideal, but their approach appeals much more to the "parent disciplines" like economics. I am not aware of ANY strategy researcher coming out of Chicago or currently at Chicago. (The strategy research literature does cite a lot of Chicago scholars, but only in the sense that electrical engineering literature cites a lot of fundamental physics literature). Unless your recommendation is to go to Chicago and become a pure economist / sociologist who then venture into the "applied" field of strategy (not the best approach IMHO), I would not consider it a good advice at all. I suspect, again, your recommendation is based on the MBA reputation more than anything else. In which case, of course Chicago is a top place.

I will include Michigan and Toronto, and Harvard with a warning sign (that their style is very different from the rest of the strategy field, and has a pretty big reputation for inbreeding. that could be good or bad depending on what you prefer). Purdue is sometimes mentioned because the founding editor of SMJ is there, but I personally would not place it as a top program.

[glorfindel79]

Can anyone give me some information about the reputation of INSEAD in Strategy phd?

I try to find a ranking of schools in Strategy Phd but I can't find any.

Can someone help me?

Thank you

[moomber123]

Originally Posted by glorfindel79

Can anyone give me some information about the reputation of INSEAD in Strategy phd?

I try to find a ranking of schools in Strategy Phd but I can't find any.

Can someone help me?

Thank you

Unfortunately, there is no "ranking" for Strategy PhD per se. What you find in this particular thread is mostly MBA-based ranking with perhaps a strategy twist. Some would argue that their source of ranking (from Financial Time, or other well known MBA ranking) specifically indicates "research" or "PhD" ranking, but my experience is that those rankings do not reflect the Strategy PhD market at all.

As stated in my previous post, business school ranking for MBA do not correlate with the PhD program quality the way that other academic departments' master's level and doctoral level programs correlate. Some top schools, like Harvard, Wharton, Chicago Booth (still not used to this new name.. GSB sounds much better..), do also have top PhD programs, but each department does not focus on the same research area, or adopt the same research approach. You can also refer to UT Dallas's ranking of research output, and use journal selection to target a particular area. But you might find the ranking somewhat difficult to reconcile with the usual business school ranking of "prestige." For example, if you select ranking based on top strategy journals (SMJ, AMJ, AMR, ASQ, OS, etc), you will see Illinois is ranked # 9 in the world, whereas Berkeley is ranked #23, and Chicago #29. This flies in the face of the sense of business school ranking we typically would assign to these three schools.

This does not mean the ranking is biased. In fact, of all the rankings out there, UT Dallas's ranking is perhaps the most objective (with no peer assessment, or other subjective elements. It simply counts top journal publication adjusted to department size.) This seemingly inconsistent ranking is due to a few important "facts" in this academic area:

1.) as mentioned, MBA ranking is the main source of prestige for business schools. Unlike other graduate programs, wherein PhD programs tend to be the source of academic prestige.
2.) in the field of strategy, not all departments agree on the boundary of the field. Some departments are explicitly economics-based, and their researchers publish in journals that econ departments would publish in (e.g., Chicago), some department is very "consulting" oriented, and would do case studies, and count top practitioner journals as academic publishing, (e.g., Harvard). So ranking like this obviously can not reflect the difference in program orientation.
3.) even for departments that share similar "orientations," there are minor variation in what is considered "top" journals, which would then affect their research focus and result in somewhat "unstable" ranking.

Therefore, I really would not base my admission decision on ranking alone. However, there seems to be correlation between "prestige" (MBA ranking) and eventual placement for PhD grads. If you care about that, sure, shoot for the stars. But I also need to warn you that only a small number of graduates from top departments (MBA ranking - wise) place among top schools. The rest fall down the list, and fall hard. Because middle tier ranking school (I'd say ranking #15-50) obviously would start paying attention to research productivity more than just pedigree, and some top schools don't necessarily focus on the "typical" research outlets, graduates from those departments who fail to place among the elite departments can end up at low ranking departments.

In the case of INSEAD, it is probably more known for the MBA program. Its reputation is more "consulting" like, (more similar to Harvard) than the academic type (like MIT or Chicago), their PhD program placement might not be as competitive. I am not aware of any placement in US top departments recently from INSEAD's PhD program. However, this might also be due to the "European" bias. European research program tends to be more qualitative (nothing wrong with that. my own research is more qualitative than the typical econometric type, but then placement-wise, US strategy departments still prefer the quantitative type). They also have a slightly different publishing outlets, so perhaps might not help their graduates place well in US departments.

Nevertheless, placement issue aside (I would not recommend using placement as the sole decision factor. You have to like your research first, before you worry about how well you place), INSEAD's strategy group is no doubt one of the strongest in the world. Prominent researchers at INSEAD who jump out of the top of my mind include Karel Cool, and with Bruce Kogut moving from Wharton to INSEAD in 2002, it has one of the most prominent strategy star on board. UT Dallas' research output ranking puts it at #5 in the world. (again, this is based on faculty research alone, might or might not relate to PhD program quality). I am somehow doubtful that stars like Cool and Kogut can tend to doc students as carefully as other emergent stars. This is based on some experience seeing students from these "stars" faculty not placing as well as I would imagine (but also not horrible). So, it's really a mixed bag.

Overall, I would recommend not focusing too much on ranking. Look at research interests, and contact the current students to learn about the program details. Insider stories are especially important. Some top departments (and some not so top but decent departments) have some pretty nasty horror stories. So I would not just jump onto those top departments based on prestige and placement record alone. Due to the sensitive nature of those "stories," I would not openly name the departments or faculty here. But I sure can tell you it can be so severe that doc students in those departments end up seeking counseling to deal with the stress and unreasonable treatments.

Best of luck.

[mikebike]

so from the conversations above i collected a list of schools which might be particularly interesting for a phd in strategy:

-MIT Sloan
-Wharton
-Fuqua
-HBS
-Ross
-Insead
-LBS

What do you think about the following programmes?

-Columbia Business School (PhD in Management)
-Kellogg (PhD in Managerial Economics and Strategy=
-NYU Stern (PhD in Strategy

2nd Question: Does anyone care about the GRE verbal section if you can provide sufficient english skills in the toefl? what would be an "acceptable" verbal score in combination with a math score between 780-800?

thanks

[zshfryoh1]

Kellog MEDS program has two concentrations. One is the MECS concentration (the one you reference), which to my understanding is a quant heavy strategy theory/micro theory/game theory PhD and is a more theoretical program with more of a quantitative and economic focus than some of the more OB oriented strategy programs. Still, it is arguably the top place in the world to go to if you are interested in game theory the more quant heavy econ oriented strategy stuff, and is a very well regarded program in the econ world (though I am not sure of the perception of the program in the strategy world). The second program is an OM concentration, and is like an other OM/OR program and probably would not fit your interests.

Columbia Business School has some excellent faculty in the management dept, though I have no idea how good the PhD program is.

NYU Stern's Strategy PhD is technically jointly offered by the econ and OB departments, but it is divided into two concentrations. One is the econ concentration, and is run by Stern's econ department and is more like Kellog's MECS program, while the other concentration is a management concentration that is run by the OB department. I don't know much about the quality of the program, but their placement in recent years has been excellent.

While I am an econ/finance person and not a strategy person, to my understanding there are two broad divisions within the field of strategy. There are schools and programs that take more of an OB/psychology/economic sociology approach and there are those that take a more quantitative/microeconomic/game theory approach. While all schools and programs study strategy, the different approaches to study fit different students.

As to the GRE V, if you are not a native english speaker and are required to take the Toefl, then they will probably not count the GRE V score for much if your Toefl scores are good. Even for native english speakers, as long as you score >500 or >550 on the GRE V, most schools will not care beyond that.