Admitted, now what?

[Prawler]

It's fascinating to start PhD in Finance directly after attaining my undergraduate degree. Whenever I see people seeking for help, I come to discover that average age of the incoming class of b-school PhD's is about 27-28. Industrial work experience is of great value , no doubt on that. I know one other guy that is directly admitted after undergraduate. Is there anyone just like in our situation in the forum ?

I wonder how you guys are preparing yourself towards curriculum. Have you started to study towards your grad. studies? If so, I am curious how you prepare yourself.

Thanks in advance,

[Bloomsbury]

Wow ! Congratulations, you must have had an impressive track record to get into the program directly from undergrad.
I will apply next year, straight from my masters, with very short work experience and being pretty young compared to the average applicant, so it's good to know I still have chances. May I ask what was your profile ?

[desimba]

Originally Posted by Prawler

Whenever I see people seeking for help, I come to discover that average age of the incoming class of b-school PhD's is about 27-28.

The answer to your question lies partly in it. The only reason that you see such people asking for help is because it needs some amount of effort to justify why somebody who has been out of school for 4-5 years is interested in getting back to school whereas that isn't an issue for people who are joining right after undergrad.

Returning to your general theme of how valuable industry experience is, the answer really depends on the kind of work experience has been. For instance in my case, since I have worked in management consulting, my experience would be seen as valuable to the Strategy programs but not as much to programs in Organizational Behavior let's say. Similarly for work experience to be regarded highly by the finance adcoms, it is likely that it would have to be in the financial services industry and even then, a pedestrian job at such companies is unlikely to prove useful. The bottomline is that don't be dissuaded by your lack of work experience. Your recommenders still remember you better than the recommenders for people who have been out of school while at the same time, your studying habits haven't been lost either.

[Prawler]

Originally Posted by Bloomsbury

Wow ! Congratulations, you must have had an impressive track record to get into the program directly from undergrad.
I will apply next year, straight from my masters, with very short work experience and being pretty young compared to the average applicant, so it's good to know I still have chances. May I ask what was your profile ?

Which schools are you planning to apply?

[Bloomsbury]

Originally Posted by Prawler

Which schools are you planning to apply?

I'll wait to have all the information to display to post my profile, but probably 3 schools top 10, 2 top 30, 2 top 50, 2 top 100

[GymShorts]

Originally Posted by Prawler

Industrial work experience is of great value , no doubt on that.

I know this is true for MBAs, but I'm not sure it true for research PhDs. IMHO, there are a few reasons business and finance PhDs tend to be older:

1.) Most people who major in business/finance as an undergrad do so to go into the private sector. Only after a few years of working in the private sector, I think some of them determine they would prefer academia.

2.) People from other fields that might also qualify for business/finance PhDs (such as economics or statistics majors) don't have a strong interest in business/finance.

I know probably cannot get data on this, but we could get a better picture of how work experience affects PhD admission if we knew what percent of undergrad applicants get admitted, and what percent of those working in industry get admitted. Also, I think research-based work experience might greatly help.