Profile Evaluatation Request for PhD in Strategy/Management

[sdelehan]

Hi All,

 

I am a first year MBA concentrating in Business and Public Policy, International Management, and Strategy at Rochester-Simon trying to get a feel for my admission chances for a Strategy PhD. My research topic would center around how firms and organizations deal with imperfect/uncertain information and operating environments in developing and emerging markets; basically how entrepreneurs and larger businesses innovate and survive in difficult situations. Full disclosure, I am also looking at the potential for a political science degree in comparative politics to take a larger scope view of this topic but I feel that my topic is quite cross-functional and my MBA may better serve me in a Strategy or Management degree.

 

A little bit about myself:

 

• 2013 BA in International Relations and History from the University of Rochester. Research Honors with Highest Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, 3.95 overall GPA, Top graduating student in both Political Science department and History department.
  
• 2012 GRE scores: Verbal 166 (96%) Quant 159 (74%) Writing 4.5 (80%)
  
• I did an honors thesis in history as well as an invite-only upper level research thesis for political science as an undergrad.
  
• I was a a student research consultant for small businesses and did pricing research for a local startup, as well as some HR and market research for a company in Chicago.
  
• 3.81 GPA in business school. The school is very quantitive focused and I've been doing a good deal of stats, programming, etc.
  
• I haven't done official coursework in calc, but have done work with research design and implementation through the MBA.
  
• Studied abroad in France as an undergrad and I am proficient in French.
  
• I will be interning with USAID this summer in Ethiopia to do development work (hopefully some research) and then will be in Japan this fall to take coursework in development and international business.
  

I know that the GRE is a little lacking on the quantitate side and I will be taking the tests again this June. As far as recommendations go, I know I can count on my honors advisor from History undergrad, though I am not sure how useful that would be. I also hope to get a letter from my research methods professor testifying to my ability in that subject; and hopefully get my strategy professor's recommendation as well. I am looking at Duke, Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, UT-Austin, USC, Wharton, and Northwestern as potential targets and I have found faculty at these schools that look like they would "fit".

 

Any comments on outlook or where I should focus my energies would be super helpful. Thanks!

[tm_associate]

I apologize that no one has responded to you yet..

 

Quick thoughts...

 

 

- your MBA will be minimally helpful in your pursuit of a phd, mostly because the focus is different (i.e., phd = research orientation)

- I question what 'research design and implementation' in an MBA actually consists of....

 

- If your interest is in political science, i'm not sure that strategic management may be the right direction ... based on the limited information you have provided, i'm not sure how your entrepreneurial interest in firm survival and innovation may be related to comparative politics... (though this is hardly my area

 

- From a very surface level view, your degree and low quant score may work against you in a field like strategy, which employs more econometric heavy methods... it may be helpful to get a higher quant score or to demonstrate that you have the ability or statistical know-how to succeed

 

- grad school GPAs are known to be inflated, so a 3.81 doesn't help as much, though your undergrad GPA is good.

 

- Your target school pool seems a bit small.... I'd suggest broadening your search and finding other schools that are, perhaps, niche schools that focus on your specific interest and do it very well (e.g., U of Oregon, based on my limited surface-level knowledge of strategy/entrepreneur area, has decent faculty)

 

- an applicant can hardly be expected to have a narrow research interest, so searching out schools with good faculty with adjacent but different perspectives may help inform your specific interests.... A good place to start is to consider if you are interested in a more economic perspective of strategic management, or a behavioral orientation. This will help focus your targets, but also expand your search in terms of other sources to motivate your research.

 

 

Sorry for the brevity here, but I hope this helps get you started.

[HorsesInVA]

So I'd agree with the previous post that an MBA may have at most, a marginal effect on the success of your application, and that an MBA GPA below 3.9 doesn't do any favors either for the reasons also listed above. I'm at a program where near as I can tell, no one in my dept/group or any of the other departments that do similar work to ours has somebody with an MBA as a PhD student. That's not to say we don't admit people with MBAs, we definitely did, but she ended up working for Google when she realized what the PhD experience was going to be like.

 

Where I'd disagree is the part about the political science fit. Depending on what sort of focus you want to look at, there's a fair amount of political science research that would cross overs with strategy/entrepreneurship. For example, one fairly common theme in entrepreneurship research are the laws and regulations that govern entry into the market, and how the imposition or abandonment of these regulations affect entrepreneurship rates/success. My experience with the political science dept. at my school is that there isn't that much work on entrepreneurship and politics so there's an opportunity to create content there.

 

The part that would be important to consider is whether or not you want to study your topic embedded in a political science or management environment. What I mean is, you can join a political science dept. and take classes in the B-school or you can be in the B-school and take classes in the poli. sci dept. But which dept. you affiliate with dictates your day to day experiences and the general types of topics you'll be exposed to most regularly. So if you want to spend more time with entrepreneurship but be the guy who knows the poli. sci stuff, join a management program. If you want to spend your time with people talking about legislative processes and politics but bring entrepreneurship into that conversation, join a poli. sci dept. Just something to consider.

 

I think your profile will likely get you considered at the very least and if you pull the GRE up and have a spiffy Statement, you'll probably in the running at the list you mentioned. The only thing I would mention is that you should look into whether the people at those schools actually study entrepreneurship, despite what it says on their faculty profile. Entrepreneurship is a woolly field and its lack of theoretical clarity has meant that there's definite balkanization in the literature. For example, do you think entrepreneurial opportunities are made or discovered? (Don't say both, because to a lot of people that means you lack a theoretical backbone or worse you're just a dustbowl empiricist) But the point is, some sense about what you think is exciting about entrepreneurship will add sparkles to your application.