Please suggest schools.

[Gmater-1]

Hey CTG, what you are upto these days?

[rsb306]

You definitely have impressive grades, GMATs and course work. However, the Finance PhD programs are hypercompetitive and so if you apply to 7, I would try 3 top level and 4 mediocre.

Top Level--Wharton (Penn), Columbia, MIT, NYU, Berkely, Stanford, etc

Mid Level--Penn State, Vanderbilt, Arizona State, UC Davis, etc

The risk you take by applying to all top-level schools is that you could wind up nowhere next year. LORs are very important.

Remember, applying to PhD programs is not like applying to Masters programs where if you have the right credentials, you will get in. The Phd is more of a crap shoot. I ended getting accepted into the top school that I applied to but rejected to all other schools which were ranked lower.