Finance PhD: Booth or Wharton?

[eternalflame]

I think the placement for these two are comparable. The faculty at Booth is stronger, but it seems that the program size at Wharton is smaller and the culture at Wharton is more "caring". Which program would be a better choice? Any comments are much appreciated!

[zshfryoh1]

I think the placement for these two are comparable. The faculty at Booth is stronger, but it seems that the program size at Wharton is smaller and the culture at Wharton is more "caring". Which program would be a better choice? Any comments are much appreciated!

Booth used to have a rep for accepting a larger incoming cohort while having a low completion rate with a lot of students failing quals, but from what I have heard that is not much of an issue anymore. Overall Booth still has rep for being less caring than other top programs.

I would consider the faculty at both to be roughly comparable. Wharton's finance faculty is slightly larger than Booth's but Booth has a few Nobel winners. If you look at the UTD rankings based on the top 3 finance journals, over the last 5 years Booth has slightly more top 3 publications, but Wharton has a slightly higher publication score (publications adjusted for the number of co-authors).

Otherwise the two programs are roughly comparable and it comes down to personal preferences on location, funding, who you want to work with etc. There is no clear cut answer on which is better.

[YaSvoboden]

I agree with the above. Both are great options and where you will do best depends on how well interests align with potential dissertation chairs along with factors like location preference, how well you get along with your cohort, location preference, etc.