Please help evaluate my profile for Fall 2011

[bonbon]

I have been working after college and have always kept in mind that I want to go to graduate school. As I'm working at a good investment fund, many are advising me "against" going to school, leaving the job. After all 5 years of commitment or more is huge. So at this point in time I want to look back at my profile and carefully give it another close look before I pull the trigger. Please give any inputs, they will be much appreciated.

School: Small good liberal arts (I was an international student studying abroad in the US)

Majors: Math, Econ
I took pretty high level math courses that were offered like Real Analysis & Lebesgue's Theory, Abstract Algebra, Differential Equation, Math Modeling. Probably not exactly all "grad level courses" but I took all I could, including all statistics courses offered.
I did do Advanced Econometrics, Finance on top of Intermediate Micro, Macro, Econometrics.
I did quite a few Computer Science courses too.

I got A(s) and few A-(s) for all the above classes. I did however get some B+ in some earlier qualitative Econ classes.

GPA: 3.8 (Math GPA: 3.95, Econ GPA: 3.7)
Phi Beta Kappa

GMAT: 750 (98 - 99 percentile) with 6 writing (52 Math and 40 Verbal). I have yet to take GRE but I intend to do so since a lot of schools ask for this.

Research: Did an honor thesis in Finance that is published in a tiny journal. I also had another summer research experience at a good institution on an Applied Math subject (not related to Finance) and presented at a conference for that. Otherwise... not that much serious research experience.

LORs: I'm still debating whether to get my LORs from my Math or Econ professors (I guess it'll be a 2-1 ratio but 2 Math or 2 Econ?). They will be good, but none is from someone "enormously" famous or from any outside institution. My current plan has 1 to 2 Harvard Phds, 1 Temple PhD (who has gone to be much more known), 1 Chicago PhD, and probably a North Caroline Chapel Hill one (who is young but was the one who worked with me on my thesis. He was the only one available to work on Finance and he was easy going).

Teaching Experience: I TAed a lot of Math, Econ classes, but my main task was grading not teaching most of the time.

Research Interest: Finance, Asset Pricing

Others: I have been at a big investment fund, working in fixed income area for the last 3 years. I won't say the nature of my work is "research oriented" but definitely very quantitative. It is actually not easy to think of leaving the job for 5 years of school, but I do want a PhD experience and waiting longer might be too late.

Also, I'm taking the CFA level 3 this June. It's an all-comprehensive Finance curriculum.

Also, I don't know if high school achievements still count at all. But I had some regional and national awards in Physics, Math and Computer Science. Also, during college I attended a regional Math team contest and my team was #1.

Thanks much in advance for your inputs!

[bonbon]

Any advice at all?

[saucyapples]

I don't know what a good GMAT score would be, but given your GPA and background it seems like you'll probably do really well on the quantitative section of the GRE, so your profile looks really strong.

That said, not only are PhD programs long, but they don't pay very well. Admissions people will be worried that after a year or two (or after graduation), you'll decide to go back into the private sector. You'll have to show them that you are interested in staying for the long haul. There is a big difference between academic research and investment bank research, so I wouldn't focus too much on liking that either. If I were you I would get two econ recs and try to talk a lot with those professors to convince them that a PhD is what you want, so that they can also write in your letters that you know what you're getting into. Another good signal would be to get an RA job for the year, in order to demonstrate that you're willing to get a paycut in order to do econ research.

Other than the fact that you already have a good job (odd, right?), I think that your profile looks about as good as a liberal arts college profile can be. Good luck!

[bonbon]

Thanks saucy!

I just added the percentile interpretation of my GMAT score - around 98 to 99 percentile. I don't think it's the top score you can get, but people usually say 750+ is as good as it takes...

Regarding the fact that I have had a good, well paid job - can we flip the argument and say that, even though I have a job, the fact that I'm willing to leave it to apply for grad school means that I'm serious? Also, even though the nature of the work is not research, it is related to the field I want to study and thus, maybe will give more practical research ideas?

On your advice to take on an RA job - I have not yet to research about these. How should I go about looking for one?

Thanks!

[bonbon]

By the way, saucy, I just saw your post in the Profiles and Results thread. Congrats on getting to Harvard and HBS! That's so awesome. so is HBS the business program, and Harvard the Econ program? Which sub-field did you apply to in Business? And which one are you going to?

I see that you come from liberal arts college background too. What do you think was the key point that got you in?

Thanks much!

[saucyapples]

People with backgrounds similar to yours (banking experience) have bailed from academia in the past, so you need to explain why you're different that those people (if you've always wanted to go into academia, why didn't you go to graduate school directly? Don't you like being able to afford nice things?).

Saying that you want to research finance and wanted to first understand how people work in finance seems like a pretty compelling story to me, but I have no idea how finance professors would look at it (I spent my time after college doing development research, and wrote about how that experience would help me in graduate school, but fieldwork is much more relevant to development. In fact, it's probably the only reason why I got in to any top-15 places).

People get in from non-research backgrounds every year. It's not a deal-breaker, but something that admissions will consider and therefore that you should address.

I got my RA job through my thesis advisor, that seems like a good place to start. Many econ departments post RA offers on their public websites, that might be another thing to look into (Job List for Economics Undergrads, Harvard Econ Department - Job Opportunities and Funding in Economics, Employment at NBER, etc.)

There isn't too much difference between the business econ program at HBS and the regular econ program at Harvard - the course offerings are the same and the professors barely (if at all) know who is in which program in terms of their advisees. I ended up picking HBS because if I choose to I can take a field course instead of the second semester of macro, and in the third year students get (are forced) to take a semester of MBA courses, which I think sounds cool. There are several B-schools that have similar programs, I would highly recommend looking into those, both because they probably look more fondly on experience and because the stipends are higher.

[dsdoodle]

Hmm, interesting. Your opportunity cost will be very high if you have a good job already. Do you not see yourself continuing at this job? If not, then sure, this may be a good idea. Your profile seem to be pretty competitive, but it all depends on how good your letter of recommendation will be and I think it may be a good idea to ask us again after you have taken your GRE, as that is pretty important. Doing well on it will prove to the adcoms that your brain hasn't died yet after 5 years of work.

[bonbon]

saucy, again thanks a lot for your reply. Just to clarify though, I'm not exactly working in "banking". In fact, I never applied for any investment banking job. I took this job as it was listed as "doing quantitative analysis" and so on. I work a lot with analyzing financial data and asset pricing models. Also, I will surely check out your RA tips. I never found these before! So thanks very much.

ETA: saucy, I just checked and it seems like opportunities for the next academic year mostly have passed. And my other concern is, I have been out of school for 3 years already, now if I take up an RA position for another 1 - 2 years, it seems like it might get too late?

dsdoodle, it's not that the job itself is bad. it's just not the long term path that I envisioned and also I still yearned for more rigorous academic stuff. It's true that it's not an easy decision, as being paid is nice, especially when I was always a very poor international student on a tight scholarship. I do want to aim for the top 10-15 schools though, and that would make everything worthwhile.

[saucyapples]

Sorry - I didn't mean to mischaracterize your job. Since I'm a complete ingrate, in my head anything having to do with finance is "banking," even though that's obviously wrong.

You could take a one-year RA position this summer and apply in the fall without losing any time, right?

Seriously though, the best advice that I can give you is to call (not email) your thesis advisor and ask him/her. S/he'll have contacts with professors looking for help, and if s/he likes you s/he'll help you find something worthwhile. And if your advisor doesn't like you, your application is in trouble regardless of what you do.

My experience is that the professors I talked to were thrilled that I was applying to PhD programs and tried to help me as much as they could. It's the small-school advantage.

[Gecko]

1) Have more econ than math writers for your letters - you'll want them to convey that you have research potential in econ, not math.

2) The lag time could be a concern for adcoms (is that guy still comfortable with math?) - can your writers stick their neck out for you?

3) Since you work on asset pricing models, consider weaving that into your SOP and make it into a tentative research question that has interested you. Like the others mentioned, this attempts to weave in both your industry experience and your studies.