Match between RA and Research Interests

[asapanda]

[h=2]I am an Economics undergrad in the UK graduating in 2021. My ultimate goal is to get into a top Marketing PhD (or potentially Economics PhD for IO).

 

I am planning to apply to various full-time RA/pre-doctoral fellowships and hopefully be able to start as a full-time RA from June 2021. However, I was wondering how important it is for the subject of the RA experience to match with my research interests. For example, would it be helpful for me to RA for a professor researching, say, international finance, when my research interest is in quantitative marketing/IO?

 

Any help or advice is truly truly appreciated!!![/h]

[BrazilianPhD]

At least for quantitative marketing, it's very common to have applicants with different backgrounds. So, I don't think having experience with research related to international finance would be a bad thing. It's good. Even if the topic is different, the approach and methods can be similar. And you can show you have research experience.

 

But, of course, it helps if you have experience that is closer.

 

If you are moving from international finance to quantitative marketing, you probably need to think how you will explain that change, and maybe how you might apply the prior knowledge to marketing (e.g., financial impact of marketing investments).

 

So, it depends on how you position yourself, how you will sell that experience as a good thing for quantitative marketing.

[gentvenus]

Agree with the advice above. It really depends on how you position yourself, how you will sell that experience as a good thing to admission committees.