Profile Evaluation for PHD in Strategy or Marketing.

[sandesh1983]

Hello Friends,

 

I am from India and below are the required details.Requesting you to check and give a feedback. Thanking you in Advance.

Test Scores (GMAT/GRE): (Note: It often helps a lot more if you list the percentiles each of your raw/composite scores are associated with)- GMAT Yet to Appear but I am Confident of Scoring between minimum 600 to 650 Points.

Undegrad GPA: 04 ,Engineering in Production From India

Graduate GPA: 04 ,MBA in Marketing From India

Research Experience: 0

Teaching Experience: 0

Work Experience: 10 Years in Oil & Gas,Power & Automobile Sector in Sales & Supply Chain Functions

 

Concentration Applying to: PHD in Strategy or Marketing

Number of programs planned to apply to: 03

Dream Schools: Harvard, Insead, Stanford, MIT Sloan or any other top 50 Colleges.

 

 

Other Questions:

 

What made you want to pursue a PhD?

 

Join Education Field as a Faculty and also to carry out research related to Strategy.

 

 

Questions or concerns you have about your profile? No

 

 

Any additional specific questions you may have: No

 

Regards,

Sandesh Musale

[BrazilianPhD]

For a PhD, a GMAT of 600-650 is very low. I'm a Marketing PhD student, and my research interests are related to Marketing Strategy. Since you wrote you are interested in Strategy or Marketing, I guess your interests would be close to mine. And my GMAT score is 750. I recommend aiming at least 700.

 

It is still possible to be accepted with a score of 650, but the cases I have seen are for applicants with a strong profile despite the low GMAT. And I don't see that here. I guess a low GMAT with zero research experience will keep you out of most top 50 schools.

 

Even if you had a very strong profile, applying to only 3 schools would mean almost no possibility of an offer. Usually, people apply to at least 10 schools, on average probably around 15 schools.

 

And every time I see a list of dream schools that mention only famous schools, I get the feeling that the applicant didn't do much to identify which schools are the best for him/her. Applying to a school just because the school is famous is a bad strategy for PhD.

 

I may be wrong, but Harvard, Stanford, and MIT seem to me so different from each other, that I can't see how the same applicant would be a great fit for the three of them.

 

And you didn't really answer what made you want to pursue a PhD. What you wrote is probably true for every PhD student in Strategy, it does not tell anything about YOUR motivation since it is too generic.

 

The general feeling is that you haven't done much yet to make your profile strong enough and improve the odds.

[Sangria]

To clarify, are you considering Marketing Strategy vs. other Marketing concentrations, or Marketing vs. Management Strategy? Management Strategy is quite different, but given your MBA concentration in Marketing, I'll assume you're looking at Marketing programs (I am a Management student).

 

I agree with Brazilian - a low-ish GMAT score won't necessarily keep you out of Top 50 programs; however, without some other strengths in your application (i.e., research experience, strong letters of recommendation, etc.), I strongly suggest applying more broadly to T75 and T100 programs. You will need to find the right "fit," meaning that you need to identity programs with PIs doing research in areas you're interested in. I'm not familiar with the Marketing programs at any of the schools you mentioned, but if their faculty are doing different kinds of research, it will be time-consuming to write strong SOPs for each program, and a generic SOP (i.e., one that doesn't identify research interests) won't help your application, and could actually hurt it. A statement that identifies research interests that the faculty at a given program doesn't share will be even worse.

 

Overall, given no research experience, if you can identity departments where you share research interests, write a strong statement of purpose (the "what made you want to pursue a PhD?" question requires more insight, as Brazilian noted), and have 2-3 strong letter writers, you do have a chance to attend a good program if you apply broadly enough. Pay attention to the student placements of the programs you apply to. You may need to ask faculty about this if they do not publish anything on the website. Some "lower ranking" programs have excellent placements, and/or have productive and well-known faculty, so do not discount them based on perceived prestige. Further, University A may have highly productive consumer behavior faculty and less productive strategy faculty, whereas University B may have very productive strategy faculty and less productive consumer behavior faculty; this is why you need to focus on specific faculty and departments rather than the rank of the university as a whole. University A might be ranked much higher than University B, but if Uni B has a better fit, you will likely be more successful there than at Uni A.