moomber123

I am quite a late comer to this thread, but I agree that this is a very nicely posed question. My 2 cents: 1.) I do not read all papers at the same level. It's simply impossible, and also not the best use of your time. Some papers are more important than others, and some purposes require detailed level of reading and some don't. 2.) My rules of thumb to decide how careful I read a paper: "classics" I read carefully. These are papers that everyone in the stream would always cite. I read extremely careful so I make sure I don't misquote classics one slight bit. That is something that reviewers can easily pick on with comments like "the author might not fully understand Williamson's argument on asset specificity." Embarrassment aside, it's just not a good thing to have to fight about in the already demanding review process. So classics I read like my life depends on it. Furthermore, I make sure I talk to more senior scholars to fully understand the context of those classics. The particular state of affairs when those classics were written, and what might come after them. Having the detailed knowledge that situates those classics in the overall stream of research literature would give you a far more nuanced understanding of the materials. I skip the methodological sections or just quickly skim through it when I am in the stage of developing the overall theoretical framework. Those methodological issues can only serve to distract you with context specific measurement issues and force the readers to give up too early to make significant theoretical contribution. This is not to suggest that methods don't matter, but I firmly believe that the natural sequence of academic research requires a theory first practice. Many disagree with me on this point, but I feel that their rationale is rooted in an opportunistic approach to academic publishing. Their eyes are set on publication first, and academic content second. Many certainly make great career doing so, but in the big scheme of thing, that kind of approach makes it harder to produce high impact work. This is also the reason why if you look at the impact factors of articles in top journals, you will find a highly skewed distribution. Even at the very top level journals, there is a huge spread on quality and level of contribution. I do read the methodological sections very carefully, but not in isolation. By that I mean I rarely pick one empirical paper and spend hours trying to unpack all the methodological issue. That would tend to situate the readers in one particular empirical context, which might or might not be theoretically relevant. What I do is I read methodological sections very carefully in a comparative manner. I would gather a number of papers in similar empirical context that look at one particular theoretical constructs, and compare and contrast them very carefully. I would also pay close attention to how analysis is done. The reason for this approach is the importance of replication in scientific method. Replication is huge in other disciplines, like physical science. In our field, it's sort of some high principle we sort of just mention in foundational method classes and pretty much ignore. There are numerous reasons specific to our field, or social science in general, that make the ideal level of replication hard. But it seems to me the current paradigm sort of just ignores this highly important process in scientific method. For this reason, I only read method section carefully in a set of articles. Never in isolation. 3.) I struggled with finding a particular reading rituals as a doctoral student. I went through phases. For some period of time, I would print out all the articles I read, carefully bind them, highlight and annotate my thoughts along the way, and organize them nicely. Pretty soon, I either ran out of space, or I lost track of things as they expand outside my primary work area. This approach also failed miserably when I started to travel frequently for conferences and job talks. There is an aggregation effect in weights that dead trees produce and that I sometimes neglect. Things can get rather impractical very easily. For some period of time I became obsessed to find technical solutions to this problem. I once relied exclusively on tablet PC to read all my PDFs. My mark up and everything was all digitized. This approach also failed because digital copies of papers can't be "spread" around on a big table. So when it comes time to start writing, I found myself constantly opening and minimizing windows. Screen real estate becomes a disabling limit. I found the ideal approach when I started on my dissertation. When the sheer volume of papers to review and reference demand a much more systematic and robust solution. Using software like EndNotes that allow one to track all the papers is pretty decent. But I sometimes found the extra learning to know a particular software quite annoying. I eventually settled on an ad hoc Excel solution that track my bibliography in a consistent format. I forced myself to write a few passages about that paper as well, not just copy and paste the abstract, and attach to the spreadsheet entry. It is important not to just copy and paste the abstract, because what I get out of the paper might not (and often not) be what the authors consider to be the main contribution of their papers. I sometimes even assign my own version of keywords to the articles, ignoring what the authors provided. This practice makes integrative theory development so much easier. With the spreadsheet for a particular stream of literature, I don't necessarily care if the paper is printed or not. I find myself constantly going to the spreadsheet to look things up. And the level of abstraction that using a spreadsheet "index" approach has proven to be the most appropriate for paper writing. I have looked into other software solutions, but I guess I am too mentally lazy to really learn them to reap the benefits. Or perhaps I am too into the freedom of making my own ad hoc solution. One important practice, with Excel or other software package, is I always produce one page summary of the stream of literature. It can be in bullet point style, tables, diagrams, or just a few passages like executive summary, but I am very disciplined in doing this. At first it seemed like a total waste of time, and at times it seemed virtually impossible to summarize a whole stream of literature in one page, but over time, I realized these difficulties reflect deeper issues. It could be that the stream of literature is simply not mature enough yet. Forcing myself through that process of trying to find order in a chaotic landscape really helped identify the missing links in the stream of literature. In fact, a few relatively successful theoretical publications I scored are the direct consequence of attacking "messy" literature with this one page practice. It also relates to one important wisdom my teaching experience ended up teaching me: if I can't explain it clearly enough to people, I might not have fully understood it. Too often I read a literature, and I think I "get it," but forcing myself to teach it, or in this practice, forcing myself to pretend to be teaching it in a one page summary, usually identify area that I am actually a bit fuzzy on. I also share these one page notes very liberally among my peers. I do not consider them my personal treasure and guard it as such. True, maybe some of them free ride on me. But most often, I got feedbacks that go like "uh, I think you are missing this important points," or "wait a minute, I think you are making too big of a deal on that particular linkage. It's not really the main point." The dialog is immensely helpful, and a successful co-authored projects resulted from sharing those notes. I entertained with the notion of just putting it online for everyone to access, but a few trial made me realize that having personal ties to people I share those notes with makes the feedback a lot more relevant, so I stopped the unlimited distribution of those notes. I also became a bit selective with whom I share those notes. Some of my peers, often time, have earned a reputation that they just don't "get" some aspect of this literature, and it might not be fully worthwhile to engage in dialog with them. I also would like to say that this approach seems to work well in the seminars I teach. Graduate students tend to hate it at first, especially the more junior ones. But over time, they seem to discover the benefit of this reading practice and some of them actually developed some rather interesting variations (wiki sites, wall size poster in shared doctoral student office where people are free to leave notes and comments, etc) My last comment is one word of wisdom: I realized over time that reading well means reading with writing in mind. Do I need to track this detailed information? Do I need to retain citation information? How would I respond to this point? How do I dispute this argument? And it dawned on me a few years ago that this is exactly what my high school English teacher meant by reading "critically." To read with writing in mind, is essentially to read with something to say back. To read with the intention to engage in deep conversation. With that big guideline, I become much more effective in reading, and the writing process becomes a lot easier. hope you guys would find this rambling useful.

your overall profile is impressive, but the amount of details make it hard to give a precise assessment for top 10 finance PhD program. the fact of the matter is that top 10 finance places are never easy to predict anyways. I would encourage you to not worry too much about having an estimate of your chances, and just charge ahead with applications efforts. your profile certainly qualify you as a contender, with perhaps a slightly lower GPA than those top places usually see. It is not a big deal though, as it is the overall package they look at, not the individual item. there are studies out there that look into PhD admissions decision and it is fairly consistent findings across the board that overall package, fit for the program, and other more qualitative aspect of your application package matter a whole lot more than individual scores. best of luck!

I agree with you, Haread, that publication ultimately determines tenure decision. And I would like to clarify my description of those "latent elite" schools as "sad places" to be at. I do not mean to convey the impression that going to those "latent elite" schools is a bad choice, and prestige from elite schools is the dominant factor. The usage of the word "sad" might have been rather unfortunate, as I was trying to highlight their under-appreciated achievement, not to further discount their incredible scholarly contribution. Illinois in particular got a lot of my attention. I know quite a few former and current faculty there, and they contributed to OB/OT research immensely (they started the whole resource dependence theory), yet I rarely see aspiring doctoral students considering Illinois among their top choices. Their current faculty continue to produce top quality work, but their graduates have yet to place at those elite schools. I also would suggest your emphasis on publication might be a bit confounded. Is it your point that publication is important for tenure? or for initial placement? My main contention about those "latent elite" schools is that they struggle in their initial placement to reflect their true potential. Your example of a climbing placement from Michigan State further reinforces my point - it takes time for "latent elite" graduates to build reputation, and elite school graduates seem to get that automatically. The fact that your anecdotal case of elite schools grads fail to get tenure while "late elite" grad does is exactly my point: it is the second half of the ball game that these "latent elite" school grads really shine. It is sad to see them not having the benefit of the reputation that others might not deserve. But I stand by my initial point: "latent elite" school graduates experience some difficulty that elite school grads don't for their initial placement. That contention does not underestimate the importance of publication. It only reflects that at initial placement stage, the minimal number of top journal publications that few of the fresh PhD achieve, are simply too small a sample size to make any judgment on. So hiring departments still rely on reputation and prestige. Tenure stage decision is usually 7 years removed from that point, with a lot more publication record to examine. Your anecdotal cases might serve as encouraging examples for those currently at those "latent elite" schools, but the overall trend of initial placement would still reflect the situation I described. And that is a situation I wish we as business scholars can help eliminate down the road.

capital_structure's reply was so absurd that I forgot my main point after doing the little bit of UT Dallas query, something I do on a daily basis to entertain myself and my peers when familiar names show up :) IIT Stuart has managed to publish ZERO article in any of the top finance journals since 1990. Not by their faculty or students (affiliation rule requires both student and faculty to be listed as affiliated, so long as they are authors). PhD program is intended to produce academic work. Even if a large number of PhD graduates move on to industry jobs (which I fully respect, but would point out that is not common among PhDs in business disciplines), you need to assess the cost and benefit. The program will take at least 3-4 years, if not longer. That's a lot of time commitment. And low ranking school like IIT Stuart also is unlikely to provide any financial support. In most business PhD programs, not only do students pay no tuition, but they are also paid a monthly stipend so they can focus on their academic work. For IIT, the PhD program will be entirely out of pocket thing. And after that, you are unlikely to place at any academic place. Professionally, if you just want to get into the industry, and think that somehow listing "PhD" on your CV will give you some sort of benefit is going to lead to nothing but disappointment. First of all, with a Stuart PhD, you still come across people with degree from places like Chicago and Northwestern MBA or MS Financial Engineering. They are A LOT of them. They all likely received much more rigorous training than you would get at Stuart. At the same time, you are going to see quite a few PhDs from scary places like MIT of Cal Tech who are tired of doing physics or math research with low pay. They will look at the quant finance industry and think"what a load of craps, that's the level of math they are using?" With a Stuart PhD, you are more likely to be compared against those other hardcore science PhD holders when you compete for job. Slim chance. A simple rue of thumb: a PhD program in any business subjects that you need to pay for is never worth your time or money. (not true outside of business, b/c other disciplines have limited funding). It is NEVER a good idea.

I hate to publicly cast suspicion to people's bias in this forum, but I can't help but suspecting you have a personal stake to defend IIT's business master programs. The reasons you kept referring to either lack any evidential support (the journal thing) or are simply absurd. on the absurd side: what does Nobel price in physics have anything to do with business master's programs? I have never attacked IIT's strength in science and engineering, and I specifically pointed out their architecture and design programs are rated among the top in the nation, which I think should show you I do have respect for IIT as a school. But when it comes to business education, IIT Stuart is simply not a contender in the Chicago area. Not considering elite schools like U Chicago and Northwestern, University of Illinois, Chicago, DePaul, and Loyala University Chicago are what people would usually consider the next tier local business school. In fact, DePaul's part-time MBA program (the only kind they have) has consistently ranked among top 10 in the nation by US News, I have never even seen IIT Stuart anywhere on any list. Loyala's executive MBA program is ranked top 16 in the nation by business week, again, the same ranking does not contain IIT Stuart in any of its categories (MBA, part time MBA, EMBA, etc). IIT Stuart is nowhere to be found in any of the credible rankings out there. Which really puts your claim that "DePaul is not even close" under quite a lot of doubt. I think those folks at business week and US News know what they are talking about, if they already go the distance and evaluate DePaul and Loyala in the ranking, it's hard to imagine that a "much better school" in your opinion can be neglected in the list. Unless, your claim is simply full of hot air. on the journal side: you seem to think my claim that Stuart faculty has no research is bogus, and you even went as far claiming "journal of finance" as a research outlet for Stuart faculty. Let me reiterate my statement: out of all these years as a business academic, all the way back to the days as a doctoral students, from the foundation course, all the way to dissertation phase, and junior faculty stage, I have yet to see a single listing of IIT Stuart on any of the journal articles I read. And I also am unique among my peers in that I did a lot of meta-analysis, which requires a blanket scanning of all journal articles and analyze their findings. So I do have a substantial sample size to support my claim. But just to be prudent, I did a search of UT Dallas Top 100 website, which lists ALL top journal publications. It's searchable by school, authors, etc. UT Dallas Top 100 site is NOT a UT Dallas study or opinion of any sort, it is simply a compiled list of all journal articles and provide an interface to search for. The same list can be accessed via web of science from any academic institution, UT Dallas simply provides a nice interface. So what I am quoting is completely objective, "counting the beans" kind of stuffs. So this is the search I did: all journals (among 24 top journals that nobody would dispute are the A list for all business disciplines, JOURNAL OF FINANCE INCLUDED!), all the way from 1990 to 2010 (as far back as their listing contains), how many articles are affiliated with IIT Stuart in any way (first author, second author, etc). To my complete shock, the query return ONE article. I was expecting to see a big fat zero. But it returns ONE - a 2006 management science article by Professor Elizabeth Durango-Cohen. As this is a co-authored paper, I immediately suspected that this is work with her PhD advisor, and going to her website confirmed that. The second author is her PhD advisor at Cal Berkeley. It is a very common practice to take one's dissertation and turn it into a journal publication and list your advisor as second author. Professor Elizabeth Durango-Cohen has produced NO top journal publication ever since leaving Berkeley at 2002. That's 1 A pub in 8 years. (In most decent business schools, 3 - 5 A pubs are required to make tenure, obviously, not at Stuart!) Now let me also emphasize that the said Journal of Finance is also listed in the search. IIT did not come up in ANY of the year. This indicates that of all the journal articles (thousands of them) published in top three finance journal from 1990 to 2010, IIT is listed ZERO time. If I were to give you the benefit of doubt (which I am increasingly less willing to as I am already suspicious of your bias), let's say those 2 IIT Stuart faculty do have journal of finance listed in their CV (I am not willing to go through the list and check myself, not worth my time), that would indicate that those are publications they achieved elsewhere. Journals are pretty strict about list affiliation, and UT Dallas search indicates that no finance journals list IIT Stuart as institution that publishes. ZERO. In comparison, the same period of search for DePaul return 49 articles (9 of them are from journal of finance). Yes, FORTY NINE vs. ONE. This clearly indicates your assessment that "DePaul is not even close" is severely biased. Loyala has 26, UIC has way more than 49 that I stop counting. So there, that's the evidence that IIT Stuart is "not even close" to DePaul, Loyola, or UIC. (Just to give you the idea of the general trend, a top elite school like University of Chicago has more than 100 publications in Journal of Finance in the same period. If I include all 3 finance journals, Chicago has more results than the query return can display in one page. If I include all 24 journals, Chicago has close to thousand. And IIT Stuart has ONE. on the wikipedia page: that is the most ridiculous and unabashed self-promotion piece. Your reference to that wikipedia page is the main reason why I suspect you have a personal stake in defending IIT Stuart. If you simply would follow the source the wikipedia page cites, it's a simple 2 page PDF file that is hosted by "Risk Limited," which is an "expert" consulting type of company that I've never heard of. Their website is also pretty lousy. The claim that IIT Stuart's financial engineering program is "first of its kind" was quoted from the RISK magazine (again, unheard of in the finance field), in that 2 page article written by Professor Mike Ong, at none other school than IIT Stuart. The article also is not one that discusses the history of financial engineering as a new degree option. It is simply a short biographical description by none other than Mike Ong himself. So wow, that's the level of evidence you are citing. My personal opinion aside, the objective facts are clear: 1.) IIT Stuart has managed to produce ONE academic publication in 20 years, one that their faculty piggybacked on her PhD dissertation work. And one that is NOT in finance. DePaul and Loyola have 49 and 26 respectively, which are already quite low compared to UIC, which is also not considered a top business school. 2.) your claim that 2 of the IIT faculty have published at Journal of Finance turned out to be completely false, unless they did so elsewhere (unlikely) or before 1990 (in which case, who cares.) 3.) your claim that IIT Stuart's financial engineering program is "first of its kind" is backed up by nothing more than a statement made by one IIT professor in a self-promoting article hosted by a sketchy financial consulting company, no other independent source is even remotely considered, let alone cited. 4.) all reputable business rankings (US News, Business Week) put Loyola and DePaul in a decent rank at Chicago local area, IIT Stuart nowhere to be found. just facts to think about I guess...

figuirngout: that is totally true, but I need to caution the recommendation of including those "core disciplinary" journals in making ranking assessment. that's a bit like comparing Apple and Orange. Places like Chicago is really different, they have their own small circle. I rarely see them floating outside of their own niche (a very prestigious, highly respected niche, mind you. I have no intention to belittle them.) choosing to go to those schools based on the publication record in those "core disciplinary" journals might not be a simple matter of "fixing" the ranking by including extra worthy journals. You might be mixing your populations by doing that! in my humble opinion, I do not agree with those schools' focus on those core disciplinary journals. We are business academics for a reason, not just applied economists or applied sociologists. It is nice when we can contribute to the parent disciplines when our research in management field results in some generalizable insights that can be contributed back, but we do have our MBA students with their practitioner focus to worry about. Business research as it is (with AMJ, AMR, SMJ, OrgSCi, and ASQ) is already very much disconnected with business practice (when was last time you heard of some managers ask each other what was their transaction costs consideration in making their strategic decision?) and efforts are already needed to connect the two divergent focuses back together. Going fully into "core" disciplines just to have an elite status is, in my opinion, counter-productive and dangerous. I am already a very theory focused person as compared to most of my peers, but doing theory that has no practical relevance would simply eliminate our identity as business researchers.

I also would like to add that picking a software package that is used by most people in your discipline is far more important than any initial cost of buying the software. This is a perfect example of network externality. Back in my doctoral time, all of my faculty use STATA. They all think SAS is evil. With a CS background, I naturally prefer the kind of programming focus that SAS adopts. I spent my first two years going it alone using SAS, and suffer the consequences badly. I can only speak for strategy, but I think STATA is clearly dominant as top strategy journal articles sometimes even put STATA codes in the appendix to illustrate the statistical techniques used. So it's quite important to know what the most "trendy" chocie is, in addition to what is more powerful.

I think it's important not to lose sight of the seriousness of PhD programs. It's a degree designed to produce future scholars, not industry practitioners. It is not harsh at all to question why a non-research business school even bothers to offer a PhD program. I can bet none of IIT's business PhD will ever find a placement in academic institution. My main point was, if you don't want to go into academic career, having a PhD is really not the best investment. (not necessarily true for engineering PhD though, the culture there is quite different). I also need to throw a ton of salt on the statement that they have 2 people who actually do research there. As an academic, I read academic journals on a daily basis. I have yet to see a single Stuart faculty piece in the past decades. NONE. Just because 2 of their faculty managed to put together some articles that show up in journals that only 100 people would read, it does not qualify that as serious academic research. Since the original poster's question was on PhD program, I don't see how your praises for IIT's master's programs are even remotely relevant. But even there I am very skeptical of the "excellent" assessment of their MSF program, or other master programs. If their own ID master's students wouldn't bother taking advantage of a fast track MBA from Stuart, I wonder how it can be spun into an "excellent" assessment. And since you mention masters of quant finance / financial engineering, (and described it as first of its kind), I need to remind you that places like Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, and Chicago will probably laugh their butts off thinking that IIT was the first of their elite financial engineering programs. And even in the small local market, DePaul's programs are consistently rated substantially above Stuart's. I seriously don't know where you got the idea that their finance related programs are "excellent" without a serious dosage of Kool-Aid.

SixOne, As stated earlier, I really hestitated with my previous reply. Rereading it now, I probably wouldn't have done it as the comment now reads incredibly condescending. I regret coming across that way. Cal vs. Stanford flames go both way. As I said, I've been to both places in different capacities, but never as student, and I can tell you the level of infantile behaviors are quite comparable. Sure, Cal people burn something, but one of the years I was at Cal, Stanford frat boys snuck onto Cal campus and dumped buckets load of red paint over a very big bronze Golden Bear statue on campus. You might think burning is extreme, but red paint over statue is property damage (and criminal). I look at these types of behaviors with much amusement, considering it a kind of undergrad experience. No real harm. So perhaps you can come to see that the dissing goes both ways, and pretty equally too. (My wise late grandpa used to tell me, when you point your finger at people, four of your fingers point right back at ya. OK, I am being condescending again. But I wish yuo see how this ridiculous bad blood is a two way street.) The fact of the matter is BOTH Cal and Stanford are incredible schools. Cal is public, so it's undergraduate program is laden with the requirement to take in in-state students. So let's not worry about comparing the undergraduate ranking or undergrad student achievements. Looking at graduate level though, it is hard to place one school on top of the other among these two. Last time National Research Council conducted quality assessment of graduate programs, 35 among 36 cateogries at Cal were ranked top 10 in the country, yeilding a weighted score of being number 1 in US. That's one study though (I would argue it's pretty fair, if not a bit dated), I am sure other studies would put Stanford on top. regarding CS61A and Scheme, I agree with you that many people would think of that as a rather poor choice for introductory CS course. But I think that reflects precisely the kind of dominant industry-focused mindset, with heavy emphasis on C/C++/Java, and system programming. Let's not lose sight of the fact that any respectable AI research would never consider anything other than Scheme/Lisp. I do work primarily in cognitive science, building simulated mental models to study knowledge representation. In this line of research, not having enough Lisp experience is the number 1 problem I have with incoming students. So, as I stated in my previous post, it is really not possible to put one department on top of the other. They are simply quite different in their approaches. Incidentally, this difference also reflects a very general impression (which is, admittedly, quite a gross over-simplication). Cal's CS department tends to be highly theoretical, almost math-like in some respect. Stanford tends to have a stronger hardware and practical focus. Perhaps Stanford's location and leadership position in Silicon Valley plays a role to this very very crude differentiation. (I know some people will cry "how about Knuth!!" but I am making very crude comparison here.) Again, I regret my tone in the previous post. I need to assure you that no one in their right mind dare underestimate Stanford's quality. My original post reflects a pretty general impression among Silicon Valley professionals that HCP programs can be "bought." And since Stanford takes pain to emphasize the HCP degree is identical to on campus degree, there is unfortunately a diluting effect. I agree with your argument, that given Stanfordn's endowment, there really is no need to profit from HCP. Unfortunately, the reality is more complex than that. The huge endowment Stanford is not channeled directly, and equally into all departments. CS certainly is well funded, but professional programs need to be viable as well. Competition within Stanford might be far more complex than you can imgaine. Most importantly, without these industry connections that HCP build for Stanfod, it is doubtful the kind of donation you are citing will still flow in the same direction. So as much as I want to be less cynical and say Stanford simply don't need it so HCP is not meant to "sell out" Stanford brand, the mere fact that HCP accounts for a huge proportion of the MSCS student population (which inflates the admissions rate as you pointed out), does not go unnoticed by Silicon Valley compaines. CMU does exactly the same thing, going as far as opening an extention campus in Mountain View. But I have to point out that the extension campus offer a different degree (Master in Software Engineering, not an MS in CS), which does help protect their MSCS's reputation.

it's very hard to predict how "lonely" you will be by doing a PhD. thinking back, when I was a doc student, I was far more social than when I was an undergrad. For me it's mostly the cohorts I was with, we work well together, and the cohort is of sufficient size (40 of us, if you count different majors) and none of us was some anti-social weirdo type. we suffered together, so we got together in our "bitching sessions" a lot. over time, we developed very close relationship, so lonely?? no way! however, I see people from different department (within business school) suffered the lonely situation you fear. their cohorts are mostly married with kids, most of them came from different countries, so they would much prefer to socialize with their own ethnic group than with their cohorts. they also have pretty mean faculty who just hate to spend time with students (in my case, the entire cohort was routinely invited to a faculty's house, as frequently as almost bi-weekly). so, it all "depends." your best chance of finding out is to visit the department, observe how they interact with one another and judge for yourself. but career wise, no way is business academic career lonely. you mostly work in group (most papers are co-authored nowadays), you go to at least two major conferences each year (AoM plus your disciplinary focused one, or your local one), and that could be a lot of fun to hang out with the old gang. those conferences also have a lot of parties, and of course at occasions like that, some (not a lot) choose to behave badly behind their closed hotel doors... I guess business academics aren't like math professors :P

It's more like, they are near the bottom 10. IIT is a respectable school, but their business school, for lack of better word, stinks. people go to IIT for architecture, or design. Their ID program is regarded as probably the best in the country for bringing design thinking into more general application, outside just the trendy looking appearance only type of traditional design program. but Stuart is pretty sad. They try hard to lure ID students by offering concurrent degree, so they can get a MBA and Master in Design Method at the same time, but only a small number of them actually do it. And that's just for MBA. Their PhD level program is even worse. Put simply, if you EVER want to find a job in academic, placing in decent places so you can do research as a career, stay far, FAR away from Stuart. If you just want to have a PhD degree but remain in industry (I can't imagine why you would want that though), perhaps it is a good place to be. I am sure they are extremely flexible and cater to a lot of working professional type. It wouldn't be a good investment though, given their own faculties are pretty bad and are usually failed scholars from other schools.

my 2 cents: 1.) ignore US News ranking COMPLETELY. Yes, reputation matters, but not reputation as measured in this particular ranking. US News ranking has little, if at all, to do with academic research. 2.) on the issue of reputation vs. publication, I need to caution the idea that publication ALWAYS trumps reputation. That is not consistent with my experience. I constantly see people from Berkeley, Wharton, or Northwestern place at good department with zero publication, but people from Illinois, Penn State, or other comparably productive places struggle to place at top places even with very early A publication. There is a reason for that: reputation DOES matter. At elite places, like Harvard, Chicago, Northwestern, MBA students are very very competitive. They tend to have very strong background, and some of them have near executive level experience before doing MBA. They have the US News ranking in their mind constantly, because they know they are at top places and would like to think of themselves as being at the very top. Imagine they are in class with a professor from Michigan State, which is a very productive place, research wise. But unfortunately, Michigan State just doesn't lend the kind of prestige that would convince those top MBA students. So does that mean you still have to look at US News ranking when considering PhD program? NO! The reality of business academia is that it's very much segmented into the "elite" institutions, and the rest of them have a more common type of ranking hierarchy. Places like Harvard, MIT, Wharton are notorious for inbreeding. They pretty much just swap their graduates around when they look for new faculty. MIT and Harvard in particular are the most ridiculous for inbreeding. Pick any one professor (Rebecca Henderson, for example, at HBS, was at MIT) and you probably will find her students at the other schools after graduate. Now if that's the type of schools you aspire to, by all means get into those programs. Or else, the chance is very slim. Then there is the "the rest of the world," which is dominated from the top by some "elite public" school - Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, etc. They do send their graduates among themselves, but they also often send their graduates "down the hierarchy" to lower ranking school. Below these public elites, there are what I call the "latent elite" schools. Those are the sad schools to be in. Their publication record usually ranks among the very top, but their graduate struggle to place among the top. They do well, no doubt about it, but they just don't walk around with the kind of prestige the top elites school grads have. Among them, Illinois is probably the saddest of all. If you go to UTD ranking, and pick only management journals (b/c that's Illinois' strength), you will find Illinois among the top 3 in the recent years. Their graduates certainly do not place like they are from a top 3 school. There are a lot of reasons behind that: the ranking reflects FACULTY research output, not necessarily student quality. The crappy location of Illinois means they lose quite a few top students to other schools. 3.) which brings to my next point: UTD ranking is DANGEROUS to use. It's a pretty good ranking to use when you are on the job market, b/c at that time, you want to find the most productive department for yourself. But productive faculty does not translate to productive students necessarily. So take that ranking into consideration with more than a pinch of salt. (like, UTD ranking puts Berkeley below Illinois, but Illinois grads are not even in the same league) 4.) reputation matters, but not the kind of reputation your grandma thinks of: in some disciplines, some schools enjoy prestigious reputation for historic reasons. The overall university, the MBA ranking, all suck. But because of that highly idiosyncratic reputation, they place their students extremely well. The perfect example is Georgia State for Information System. Their MBA program is not comparable to any top MBA programs, so reputation for the general public is very low. The overall university is also perceived very badly, usually thought of as a third rate college. But their IS PhD grads place extremely well. It's probably thought of on equal status with Minnesota and UT Austin. You can only find out about this kind of "ranking" by talking to people in the field. So I guess my main point is, no ranking you can find is going to tell you everything you need.

I would highly recommend R for statistical work, but caution that R and SPSS are not in the same category. SPSS is heavily "menu driven." It's intended to minimize coding. R is a highly complex coding environment. You need to learn how to code well to effectively use R. In generally, you will find people from the psychology or marketing background using SPSS because they conduct controlled experiment, run mostly ANOVA/MANOVA type of analysis. The ability to manipulate variables in controlled experiments means they do not rely on statistical techniques to minimize bias, increase efficiency, or achieve robustness. Not that SPSS does not offer features that address those issues, but it's implemented in a way that make it hard. That's why you don't find economists / strategy people using SPSS. They most likely will use STATA or SAS, and if they really don't have the budget, R. Statistical techniques are much more fragmented than most junior researchers might imagine. They developed along different paths because different disciplines have vastly different needs and face very different kinds of data. To that end, different software packages cater to different crowds. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, all of them claim they can do everything well. Your best bet is to ask around, and pick one that actually serve your purpose well, instead of worrying about cost. (e.g., R is free, but R is also notoriously weak in manipulating data. That's why R is most popular among statistics department where people are worried about the actual coding of the statistical tools, not the actual analysis of real life data. Learning R for a future marketing career would be a rather inefficient thing to do. The loss hours trying to learn how to do simple things in R that can be handled easily in SPSS would more than offset any savings now)

SixOne, Please do understand my previous posts reflect absolutely no intentions to depict Stanford CS department in a negative manner. The fact is that Stanford CS is among the very best in the world, and there is absolutely no need to get into a holy war here. I also regret using some sloppy language in describing a course-based or thesis based program. That is consistent with how industry people describe the options available, not the exact titles Stanford CS department uses. But why argue over words? The fact of the matter is HCP follows exactly the same admissions process (this is from Stanford CS website, so you might want to do your own homework first before accusing other people of knowing nothing), culminating in conferring exactly the same degree (MSCS, as you rightly pointed out), and subject to the same course requirement. Thus, your logic of excluding HCP people in your admissions rate calculation is completely bogus. The same degree is obtained at the end of the program, so Silicon Valley companies have no way to differentiate HCP people from the rest of "elite" as you might want to call them. These are the same companies that host the HCP program themselves, so they know full well how the program is administered. You want to compare that to thesis-driven (which means follow a faculty committee closely and conduct original research beyond course work) type of program, fine. But don't be so confident that industry would share the same opinion with you. As I commented earlier, a research oriented program is not necessarily a good thing as far as job placement is concerned. Not all jobs require an academic focus. So my comments in no way suggest that offering HCP indicates lower overall quality. According to Stanford's own website, there IS a research honor option. There is also a process in place to convert people in the research honor option to a PhD status. My depiction of two tracks might not have used the most precise language. And as I stated earlier, I only followed industry common practice. And understandably, the process to convert into a PhD status would impose a much more stringent admissions requirements. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that separation, as people are all free to pursue their own worthy goals. No judgment is made about what pursuit is more worthy over the other, so you really don't have to be so concerned with Stanford's CS department being underestimated. My last comment to you is somewhat difficult for me. I struggle with the decision to include it in the reply. I wish you would reconsider the way you present your opinion. I am sure a Stanford student must possess superb intellectual strength and receive excellent, nay, top of the world, training. It is really a shame to see how your reply might be perceived as arrogant. I am sure Stanford CS is a great place to be, but to insist that it is by far the most demanding place over other top CS departments is an argument that will not hold water. Different places adopt different approaches, but it's hard to say who is on top. I myself never reveal my academic affiliations here. I do not want to come across as using some academic background to lend prestige and add vacuous support to my opinions. I am here to share my experience with people in the forum, not to conduct holy war to establish my own sense of superiority. For instance, one can argue that Stanford's CS undergrad program is far inferior than Berkeley or MIT's, because what Cal and MIT use for their very first CS course (the purpose bible, "structure and interpretation of computer program") is only used as an upper division elective at Stanford. I know this, because I have been personally at these three places. (again, without revealing my affiliations and my capacities at these three places.) I've heard Berkeley people mocking Stanford that they need to be in upper division to understand what Berkeley students do at the first course level. (The course content, CS61A at Cal, is almost identical to MIT's first course in CS, the very first CS course for an undergraduate student, and already require the students to implement an interpreter, and a compiler in a virtual register machine.) I reject using such an argument to establish that Berkeley and MIT have "tougher" courses than Stanford. It's a different approach, with different strengths and weaknesses. (e.g., purple bible uses Scheme as the language, so it's heavily biased to a functional approach, which makes it a lot easier to implement metacircular evaluator for language construction. So it's hard to say that course is "tougher" than Stanford's introductory course.) Stanford students sometimes have an unfortunate reputation as being elitist. My experience suggests that such a reputation is unfounded. Most of them are very down to earth, despite a private school education, and generally well to do family background. As someone who has already went through all 3 stages of higher education, and who is already teaching at a top institution, I wish you would reconsider your attitude towards your otherwise highly successful academic career. Or you might one day find yourself in a situation with a fellow PhD graduate from Stanford last year. He did well at Stanford, did well at his initial placement (top 5 school for CS), published way above the tenure requirement, but walk around the department like he is better than everyone else. True, success came early for him, and his publication record is better than a lot of MIT, Berkeley, and CMU grads. But come tenure time, his case was rejected. No senior faculty member would want to put a big ******* among themselves.

I would not take the "IS in decline" as lightly. First hand experience in witnessing colleagues in IS group tells a pretty scary story. In one case, one fellow student has a top A journal publication before graduation, (which is unheard of in that particular journal for someone yet to have a PhD) and still managed to find no job at all. Yes, the economy is bad and a lot of schools had hiring freeze, but no, graduates in other departments did manage to find "some" jobs, if not as decent as they would like to have. IMHO, it is not the "decline" in IS that is worrying. It is the fact that IS has a serious identity issue and people in it seem to be fighting an ideology war that is tearing the field apart for no good reason. IS has roughly two camps: the engineering / technical part of it, vs. the more management-like, behavioral part of it. The technical people are very much like engineers. They do IEEE, they have strong computer science background, but just as has been referred to here, they do not necessarily care as much about proof and "rigor" as the folks from CS. Some of those "technical" kind in IS did get their PhD in CS departments. But as you can imagine, that is not going to be a "prestige" publication venue in the eyes of the CS orthodox. And the "technical" folks in IS do have that same contempt towards those who can't do technical works. So they tend to look down at behavioral IS folks, some of them can't even do entry level coding and focus on the "soft" issues of IS implications in organziational settings. The result is an intense fued between the two camps. I challenge you to find one "technical" article in MISQ or one "behaviroal / mainstream management" article in DSS. You might not care about the feud, thinking you would do your own thing and ignore all the nonesense, but think about your placement. IS is already in decline. Not a lot of people are going to MBA program thinking about "hey, let me learn some IT stuffs" so the overall job available is already decreasing. Add on it the "feud." At some departments, MISQ is the A journal, at some department (think Arizona), they only like engineering types of research (IEEE, ACM), of course there are places like Georgia State that does both, but a lot of places would have a very strong bias one way or another. For those places, if you happen to have one emphasis that is not in sync, you are out of luck. So this would cut your "potential jobs" in about half from a very small number to begin with. IMHO, this is the result of lack of leadership in the IS community. Some of the IS folks have gotten too comfortable with tenure, and too cozy with the "easy" research when their technical stuffs are easily seen as "advanced" in the business school. But to be honest, most of their "technical" research is quite dated compared to the engineering departments. The behaviroal people also failed to show how their research has any new foundational contribution to the larger management community. You will see articles in top IS journals with titles like "where is the IS in IS research?" etc, basically doubting if all the behaviroal IS research is simply "applied mamangement" research with IS as only the context. i-schools do represent a good alternative. I personally have deep appreciation of how they transformed themselves from library science school into i-schools with an up to date focus. But be warned that they are not at all "in the mainstream" and is not likely to be in the next few years. Only a few places manage to attract enough attention (think Berkeley i-school, incidentally, the founding dean at Berkeley's i-school, Hal Varian, is an economist, and now the chief economist at Google, so even there you will see the econ approach having strong influence) to give you a good career prospect. A lot of other less prestigious i-schools would have trouble placing their graduates in academia. So do proceed with caution in that route. My own suggestion is to think hard and deep about your interests. If you are purely a technical IS guy, there is no reason why you shouldn't just go to CS department for a PhD. Yes, CS departments can be extremely obssessed with rigor and proof, but I think there is a good reason why they end up doing much better technical research. If you are a behaviroal guy, there is no reason why OB departments can't do good behaviroal research with IS as the context. If you are into IT strategy, likewise, there is no reason why you can't do that research in strategy departments. The fact that IS is in such a struggle to find an identity, and not a single top IS researcher nowadays has the leadership (not even Andy Winston from UT Austin, IMHO) to unite the field calls for serious consideration before commitment. my 2 cents..

Well, my 2 cents: 1.) big name of the school/program is important if you want to place at top universities. Some schools care a lot of pedigree (they will never acknowledge it, but if you look at their faculty's background, you see an almost exclusive pattern of top 10 schools). but this does not in any way imply that you go to a big name school then you will place in those big name departments. As a matter of fact, since top schools care about pedigree, but has obviously less space to hire all top department graduates, once you fail to place in those top departments, you might drop down to lower ranking schools much more than decent department graduates. So you see top program (like Wharton) "shoots for the moon" and either place their grads at top 5 schools, or at no name schools. (I would not count USC as one of those absolute top place though, especially the comparison is OSU, which is quite good. Let's not kid ourselves, as much as USC wants brag about its Marshall school of business, it ain't Chicago/Northwestern/Wharton/Harvard/Stanford) 2.) big name faculty. Oh this is a big big issue. And it either is extremely helpful or extremely dangerous. Once you spend some decent amount of time in academia, you will realize that reputation comes as different "kinds." Not all "big names" are the "real deal." Some big names are famous because they are "academic politician" and they know how to secure editorship and squeeze their students to get co-authorship. Without naming names and places, I know a "big name" in one "top school" who has so much publication and has a "god-like" reputation, but he/she won't be able to tell you the titles of the article just published in top journal last year. It's all "freebie" from their hard working PhD student slaves. Now if you end up with those "big names," well, god has mercy... You will suffer. Some big names are "real deal" researchers, but by the virtue of their academic strength, might be way too busy to cater to your educational needs. That might not be a good thing at all. Your education has a few components: preparation in the foundational level, your search for a research focus and direction, your execution of your research agenda, and your placement process. Big names might be helpful or harmful to each component, so it's not a simple answer at all. But be very very careful with big names. Some of them are just evil politicians. One simple test is look at his CV and go through the huge volume of articles. If most of them are co-authored with very different people and on very different topics, then this is a suspect of the kind of "academic politicians" I am talking about. If there is a clear theme, and a healthy dose of co-authorship with a few "regular" partners, then this is much more likely to be a real deal. Another way is to ask current students. But I found that most current students are very reluctant to speak openly if their boss is one of those politician kind. The fear of their academic career is strong, especially for those working under the politician kind, so they are much less likely to tell you honestly about it. The reason why I would not name "names" or "places" are just because of that! And I did more than due diligence to reach out to current students before I committed. The day AFTER I sent in my commitment, the current students then say "NOW you are in, let me warn you about something we didn't want to say earlier." So be extremely careful with "big names!"

While I generally agree with this observation that top b-schools often recruit professors from "parent" disciplines, those recruits do not represent a majority of the b-school faculty. And if you look at graduates from those disciplines, the majority of them do not go into b-schools. So yes, it is "possible," but is it a good "alternative" is not necessarily an easy thing to say. I would suggest that if you know EXACTLY what type of research you want to do, and the best department is in those "parent" discipline of business admin, then go ahead. But if you don't really know what your research interests are, and your preferences on approach and methods, going to those departments is likely to sway you away from business school career. Take strategy for example. True, most strategy researchers would like to consider themselves as economists (and some sociologists) but the vast majority of them do not come from econ or sociology departments. And those who do cross the boundary from and migrate from econ/sociology did not make their transition "without efforts." In fact, many would emphasize that even those strategy draws on those disciplines almost exclusively, strategy is NOT "applied econ" or "applied sociology." So I would not recommend those departments without some very heavy qualification of the statement. However, I do believe that if your interests lead you away from a career in business school, then so be it. Other than the obvious huge difference in salary, I think honest academic research career should be guided by your passion and interests. So setting a constraint on b-school career might not be the wise thing to do.

regarding what core skills to have to be considered "competitive": I wouldn't worry about those advanced math/stats things at all if you don't already have them. First of all, it's not like you can just take all those courses NOW and expect to change your profile in a year or two to improve your chances. Chances are if you don't already have those skills, you will need quite some time to really acquire those skills. I think some answers so far that include a lot of "advanced" stuffs (real analysis, econ 'cores', etc) reflect an approach that is common among top schools but should be by no means "exclusive." Some places do approach management / OB type of research quite differently. (Think Harvard. They love case studies there. Will still require a heavy dose of serious econ/stat courses, but not going to kill you over doing proof like in econ department.) Some departments like to distinguish themselves with "qualitative" approach, which is not "mainstream" but is becoming increasingly "sexy" in the field. It's not something you get a simple straight answer for. Each department has its own unique view on it. A simple survey of the top journals in the field (AMJ, AMR, Org Sci, MS, SMJ, MISQ, ISR, etc) would show you what I am talking about. Some articles look like it's straight out of advanced modeling (math/stat) textbook (MS most likely) while others are only English text and the only number is the page number (AMR sometimes has pure conceptual papers). So the answer to this issue is really "it depends" and your best bet is to go to each department and look at their requirement and their current research output.

I found this list a bit odd. There is a big distinction between a top MBA program that has a strong strategy focus vs. a good research program that places their graduates well in the strategy field. I agree with Fuqua, probably the best strategy PhD program now IMHO, and Wharton, but none of the other you listed are particularly well known for top strategy people now. UCLA used to be a top strategy place, but their "star" strategy people are all very senior and aren't operating at the volume they used to. Have not seen any UCLA articles in top strategy journals for quite sometime now. (If UCLA is included for people like Rumelt, then why not Berkeley? They've got Williamson and Teece. But just like UCLA, I believe they are also quite senior and probably aren't as active as they used to be.) Chicago's inclusion seems particularly inappropriate for strategy. Make no mistake, Chicago's PhD program is by no means anything less than ideal, but their approach appeals much more to the "parent disciplines" like economics. I am not aware of ANY strategy researcher coming out of Chicago or currently at Chicago. (The strategy research literature does cite a lot of Chicago scholars, but only in the sense that electrical engineering literature cites a lot of fundamental physics literature). Unless your recommendation is to go to Chicago and become a pure economist / sociologist who then venture into the "applied" field of strategy (not the best approach IMHO), I would not consider it a good advice at all. I suspect, again, your recommendation is based on the MBA reputation more than anything else. In which case, of course Chicago is a top place. I will include Michigan and Toronto, and Harvard with a warning sign (that their style is very different from the rest of the strategy field, and has a pretty big reputation for inbreeding. that could be good or bad depending on what you prefer). Purdue is sometimes mentioned because the founding editor of SMJ is there, but I personally would not place it as a top program.

jcshay56, I think you completely misunderstood my reply. I never meant that professors' pay is a variable that somehow is adjusted by their publication after a contract is signed. That is not a correct interpretation of my post. The process of tenure track professor hiring always clearly indicates the annual salary before it's signed. And your description of the review process is mostly correct, with the important concept of indefinite tenure omitted. What I was trying to get at is the misconception that PhD grads should focus on the ranking and the particular department they place. And somehow in the same department, every professors (in the same rank) are paid similarly. It is not at all uncommon to see department willing to pay a newly grad much higher than his or her peers if he or she has impressive publication record. The point I was trying to make was, it hardly matter if you are able to place yourself in top department if you don't have decent publication. (Of course, top departments afford to be more selective and only hire PhD grads with good research record. This is a typical endogeneity problem.) As a matter of fact, some departments (University of Washington, for example) even pay full professors with low research productivity LESS than newly hire assistant professors with good research record/potential. (This is also due to historic reason. It was much easier to get tenure back in the days, and after achieving tenure, you can't fire those who don't produce research.) So I think your objection to my post was very much misguided. In this business, pretty much the only thing matters is research output.

One advice on salary issues: Don't be mislead by the salary info you see. Either average or individual faculty salary does not adequately show a lot of the factors behind. It is true the accounting / finance professors are paid the most on average, but the single most accurate predictor of bschool wages is journal publication. So if you happen to be placed at research school, and think your department is ranked high, you still need to produce research to translate that to salary.

Agree. They are exception than rule. But I wish someone would have warned me before I committed myself into a program. Long story short, perhaps we should start a completely anonymous thread to "out" those exception. I sure could have used that info before I jumped in. =)

note: this is not in any way intended to put down Santa Clara. I found the management courses there well designed and delivered. My friend ended up taking this IT strategy class, and found it very insightful. The point is, MIS program might be very technical, or only pretend to be both technical and managerial to attract more students. You need to find out about their strength first before jumping in. also, having exposure to management issue is not necessarily a "waste of time" for IT professional. You might think that you do not intend to become a manager, and want to focus on the most powerful Oracle tricks, or know the most advanced Data Warehousing techniques. But experience shows that IT professionals with insufficient management exposure often design powerful solution to the wrong problem because they do not fully understand the problem managers are faced. In that sense, having a technical background, and then attending a managerially oriented MIS program, is a powerful combination. But not having a strong technical background, and then attending a managerially oriented MIS program, would most likely not prepare one for a good IT career. I myself spent some time as an IT engineer, leveraging my applied math background, but after my MBA degree, I became so much more enlightened and realized how naive my pure technical solutions were. I would not write off the value of a managerially oriented program without really considering its benefits.

Regarding an MIS alternative: I would caution the idea of trying to enter MIS as a substitute for a CS degree just for an easier admission standard. This is based on the following reasonings: 1.) MIS as a field is not as coherent as CS. You really won't know exactly what you'd get yourself into. Some programs might list "expert system" or "enterprise programming" as some courses available, but once you get there, you'd find "expert system" to be more of a general business discussion with some toy programming exercise, and "enterprise programming" more like "introductory to Java programming." MIS as a research field is highly segmented. Some places do not even consider any programming within their scope, while some places (like Arizona) are probably as technical as their CS counterpart. Unless you really know the program, and find it a good match, the risk is very high that you will find the content much less technical than you want it to be. 2.) The issue of IT vs. software engineering is much more complicated than what most people might think. They are not as interchangeable as one might expect. IT professionals and engineering professionals, while sharing many common technical skills, operate under rather different conditions. Trying to become an R&D software engineer by going to MIS program is not going to lead you anywhere, whereas trying to become the next CIO of a company by trying to get into top MSCS program is simply silly. MIS program likes to talk about its discipline with that venn diagram, intersecting "people, organization, technology." While you might think that "technology" part could be taken as a substitute for a MSCS, it is usually addressed in a much general/shallow manner than would be satisfying, while leaving the "people/organization" part of it much more of a burden than value for your purposes. With that being said, I would recommend Arizona and UT Dallas's MIS programs as they are much more into the technical materials than other places. I would strongly recommend against Santa Clara's young MIS master's program. It is a good program for managerially oriented IT professional, with a very strong part time MBA program at its side. However, my friends who attended there frequently complain that their technical courses are titled in a highly misleading way, and they ended up taking classes with people who never program before even though they already have extensive technical exposure. Imagine you have an undergraduate degree in CS, and yet you are sitting in class waiting for the guy next to you trying to understand the difference between a class and an object. (while paying a few thousand dollars for that class!) Simply put, not all MIS programs are created equally, and you need to know more than just the course description to make the right decision. (In the case of Santa Clara, my friend actually obtained past syllabus from the program, forwarded to me, and I found it highly technical, and then finding out the actual content to be far far less technical than the syllabus suggest. You need to see the actual CONTENT of the program, like the actual lecture notes, assignment, etc.)

:) I wish I were exaggerating, but personal experience with horror indicates otherwise. I would not discuss more details than that! But I do have to stress that such case is extreme and is not a common occurrence. The key point is that academic circle is much "closed" than one would expect. You never know what happens behind that closed doors, or who so-and-so calls to talk about you "off the record." With a rigid hierarchy and powerful incentive (or controlling power) tenure system, the extent of politics is likely more problematic than most people would like to believe. Most academics are decent people doing it for passion, but there do exist vicious academics who behave more like politicians, mafia, or the like. They just don't usually show that side of their personality out in the open. But regardless of how "dark" or "healthy" academia is, applying for a lower ranking program with the sole intention to use it as a stepping stone is most likely going to fail. For one thing, as you accurately stated, getting a good LOR is going to be extremely difficult. For another thing, it is simply unrealistic that one can drastically improve his/her academic standing by going to a lower ranking program and work "extra hard." This line of reasoning assumes no one else would work "extra hard," and that is simply not going to happen in such a competitive environment. The bottom line is this: once you have reached the level that a PhD program is under consideration, it is very hard to drastically alter your standing in terms of program placement. If you are still a freshman in college and wants to do something to improve your odds, then we have a lot more to discuss. This might sound very cruel, telling people who are already done with, or nearly done with undergraduate degree with less than perfect profile that there isn't much you can do to improve your standing, but as discouraging as it might be, it might be the very reality a lot of people have to deal with. My advice is to think hard and deep why you want a PhD. I find a lot of Asian students (risking furthering a stereotype) wanting to do a PhD for reasons that are simply wrong. Family expectation, cultural background that puts a PhD at a very respected position in the society, or the like. When in reality, PhD is a very serious commitment that puts people into a very narrow range of profession. In this sense, engineering/CS PhD degree is more flexible, because there are quite a lot of R&D jobs in industry for PhD holders. This would not be true if you are getting a sociology PhD. But even with that broader career options, it is still a very serious commitment that might not be suitable for everyone, no matter how gifted s/he is. You simply need to figure out what is the best for your career before jumping into a PhD program. Programs at lower tier are more commonly accepting students who are not necessarily heading into an academic career. This happens because 1.) those programs are less able to send their students to academic positions, not that they do not want to. 2.) To survive in the "marketplace of PhD program," they might have to settle with students who are not as dedicated to academia to keep the programs running. Now, if that is not a problem, then I don't see anything wrong with going down that road. However, top tier programs are very serious about their placement, and you will most likely feel the pressure (intense, in many cases) from your professors, and peers to pursue a pure academic career. I know of one PhD student at USC who is contemplating about going into industry for better money (family reason), and she found her advisor very upset about that decision, and the sense of disappointment really bothers her. My point is, if the point of a top ranked PhD program is just the prestige, the reputation, but not based on a genuine desire to enter academia, it is very likely a failure and less than satisfying experience. Success in life can be defined in so many different ways. Getting a good solid master degree to further advance your technical knowledge, and leverage that to have a successful industry career is nothing less respectful than a successful academic career. Unless there is a very intense desire to enter academia (based on fully informed decision and genuine desire to become a scholar, not just some shallow desire to have that "glory" - many in academia would tell you that such "glory" is purely imaginary by the outsiders.) I really don't see the need to put much efforts to force a placement to places where there is no fit. With that harsh words being said, I do have to stress that transferring among doctoral programs is indeed possible, but mostly for "legitimate" reason. Your advisor might feel that your research interests fit other programs better, and decent professors sometimes even HELP you transfer. But again, that is not for reason like "transferring up" the rank. Another situation is that your advisor moves to other department, and for the purpose of continuity, s/he might want to take you along. Now that is purely by chance. You can never manufacture that opportunity before hand. So the best approach is to only join the program that you would not regret "settling" for, and if such opportunity presents itself to transfer to a "better" place (for the right reason), then go for it.