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Profile Evaluation - PhD in Finance Fall 2017


finphdind

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Hi Members,

 

Here is a brief description about me.I would love to get advice and help from members of the Urch community. Please condone my transgressions, for I am new to this forum. Thanks a lot for helping out students like me, who find it hard to get PhD advice.

 

Test Scores: GRE score 332 - Quant 170, Verbal 162. CAT Percentile - in top 30 among around 200,000 applicants (think above 99.95)

Undergrad College & GPA: 9.23/10 (top 5% of graduating class) - from an IIT (electrical engg)

Graduate College & GPA: 3.56/4 (top 3% of graduating class) - MBA from an IIM (think the best one in India)

Research Experience: Worked on a 6 months project & implementation of volatility surface under an IIM professor.

A DAAD scholarship & research internship in Electrical engg during undergrad in Germany. Paper published in IEEE conference (but subject matter is electrical).

Have taken relevant finance, economics, statistic, forecasting, and higher mathematics courses in my graduation & MBA.

Teaching Experience: None

Work Experience: Around9 months of work experience in a global buy side equity research role (Senior Research Associate in an investment management fund). I cover the banking sector, and develop valuation models for global banks and asset managing firms. 2 months of internship on the FICC trading desk of a global bank (among top 10 large banks).

 

Concentration Applying to: Finance (also business economics)

Number of programs planned to apply to: 10-15

Dream Schools: MIT Sloan, Harvard, LSE, Wharton

Planned Referees: IIM professor who guided the 6 month project, IIT professor who guided 1 year of electrical engg. project, IIM professor who taught me 3 mathematics/stats courses (or obscure German univ research mentor I did 3 months Electrical Engg internship & wrote paper with him) - Please help me choose one among the last 2 - both will write enthusiastic refrences for me.

I have always been interested in the research field, and I am interested to pursue a long term career in academic. Areas of macroeconomic policy making, financial markets (asset pricing) & corporate finance interest me a lot. I plan to pursue research in one of these fields.

 

What are my chances of getting selected in my dream schools? What will improve my chances for this year's applications. (Whether it is required for me to work for 3-6 months as a research assistant under some professors & reapply in 2018 - could you please suggest some good profs, or well know RA programs that help students in getting admission in PhD programs). Also how to approach the professors for internships/RA roles?

 

Which universities must I apply to this year to hedge my bets, and get into a good PhD program. Are there any downsides to reapplying to the PhD program again in 2018, with 3-6 months of research assistant stint? How do I find professors/institutes for sending in the RA applications.

 

Thanks a lot for the help. I plan to return the favor by contributing my knowledge to the forum once I get accepted. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am not in finance, but will comment because I don't think we have any really active finance people.

 

Being a top student at IIT and IIM is impressive. However, those top programs are very selective for finance. I think you have a chance at them, but I can't really say how good it is.

 

Rankings are always imperfect, but you can get an idea of the other good finance programs here: https://wpcarey.asu.edu/finance-degrees/finance-rankings

 

I would select 15 of the top 30 schools based on what seems most interesting to you and apply to them. I would imagine that you have good opportunities with this strategy.

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I think you'd have a good chance of getting into one of your dream schools, but there is a great degree of randomness because there might be 30 applicants to each school that are a perfect fit, yet they have to choose 3. I'll second the advice to apply to 15+ schools. Use that ASU research ranking as a guide, but also look at the schools' individual websites and check out where they place their PhD's (you'll be surprised how poorly some of those top schools place.... and how well some of the lower ones do).

 

As a note, take into account location of schools. I'm not sure how much time you've spent in the US, but the lifestyle, weather, and cost of living vary ENORMOUSLY. If you're going to live somewhere for 5 years, you should enjoy the location at least a little.

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