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zshfryoh1

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Everything posted by zshfryoh1

  1. It should fine. The quant score is what counts for the most, and as long as your scores in the other two sections are decent (better than 50th percentile) it should not matter much.
  2. I am not as familiar with mechanism design and who is doing what at the moment. For microstructure no lower ranked school has a large group. Even at the top schools most only have 3-4 microstructure people. But a few lower ranked schools come to mind. Rutgers Business School has a couple microstructure people with a couple more doing work in information or financial econometrics that overlaps with microstructure and the university has a few other people split up between the OR, econ, stat and math departments that do some work in microstructure. Baruch - Zicklin has a few people in the finance department and I think one or two more in the Stats and IS department. UIUC - Gies has Mao Ye who has started making a name for himself in microstructure, plus a couple junior faculty. I think Copenhagen Business School in Denmark has a few people. Emory U - Goizueta has Clifton Green, and possibly a couple other people who do it as a secondary area. There is Ingrid Werner at Ohio State University but I don't think any one else there. USC Marshall has Larry Harris, but I don't know of anyone else, though David Hirshleifer just moved there and he has done work in almost every part of finance. ASU - Carey has Hendrik Bessembinder and couple others. WUSTL - Olin has a few people who do it as a secondary area, but off the top of my head I don't think anyone does it as a primary area. University of Houston used to have a few people but I am not sure if they still do. If you want to add a few more top departments, there are a number of people at U Toronto - Rotman and a couple at UCLA - Anderson. Columbia actually has two top people in the Finance department, Larry Glosten and Charles Jones. CMU - Tepper also has a few people. Wharton probably has the most well rounded finance department out there and has people doing everything. Duke has some people doing econometric theory work that has applications in microstructure, but I think they are actually in the econ department (Tim Bollerslev, a couple others). The Bendheim Center at Princeton has a couple of people, but they don't have their own PhD program. Instead you get accepted into either Econ or ORFE and then get into Bendheim Center. Honestly, your grades are all over the place, and that may keep you out of the top programs, even if you do explain it in your SOP.
  3. From what I see (I am a finance PhD student with a secondary interest in empirical microstructure) not much is being done anywhere right now on the theory side of market design in financial market microstructure. A lot is being done right now on the empirical side of that, and a lot of theory work is being done on information and transaction cost topics in microstructure. But the specific stuff you mention does not seem to be very active at the moment (unless there is stuff being done on the OR side that I am not familiar with). Therefore it might be better for to just look at programs that are strong in mechanism design, or programs that are strong in microstructure in general though this will be more in finance departments than OR departments.
  4. You should be applying to more B-school PhD programs and fewer Econ PhD programs. As tutonic said, for econ Phd programs LOR's outside of economics (and maybe finance) are not worth much. And almost every top person in financial market microstructure is in a B-school finance department, and a lot of mechanism design stuff is also being done by B-school faculty outside econ departments. B-school departments are also a little more flexible about who writes your LOR's so long as they are from people who work in relevant fields and are well published, though obviously the closer the business field you are applying to is to the LOR writers' field, the better it is. Since your LOR's are from OR people, besides for B-school finance and econ departments you should also look at B-school departments such as OR, MS, Managerial Econ and Decision Sciences. Obviously you should look at the faculty at each program at each school to see what fits you best at each school. Your LOR writers are connected to Columbia IEOR which is strongly connected to Columbia Business School, especially the DRO department, and you should look at that. You will need to improve your GRE score. And I think you should add on some lower ranked programs whether for Econ or Business, unless you would rather do a masters degree and apply again in a couple of years should you not get into a top 15 this year. Most B-school programs only take 1-4 students each year (maybe 4-8 for a few top tier finance programs) so the number of slots is extremely limited.
  5. Switching to Berkely, Penn, Columbia or NWU would likely improve your profile (assuming you maintain grades, get good LOR's etc) and Cornell probably would too, but Georgetown almost definitely will not. And don't think too much about things like econ club or econ honors society. I don't know of many PhD students who bothered with any of that and it does nothing for your application. Research assistantships matter a lot, but few students anywhere get a chance to do serious RA work before Junior year either way. UVA has a top 30 Econ department in its own right. You should have a solid shot at getting into a top 10 econ PhD program coming from UVA so long as your grades and LOR's are good and your chances will be even better if you take the PhD Micro and/or Metrics sequence and do well. Ask the professors in the department where recent undergrads going for PhDs have gotten into, but it would not suprise me if they get a couple students each year into top 10 PhD programs, and a couple more into Federal Reserve positions who then get into a top 10 PhD 2-3 years down the line. If you just started your Freshman year which is what it sounds like the costs of transferring are probably low, so if you want to transfer do it soon. But if you have extracurriculars at UVA that you enjoy and those might not be available elsewhere, it might be better for you to stay. While it is a good idea to get started on coursework, getting RAships, connections for LOR's etc as early as possible, the people I know who centered their entire undergrad years around getting into grad schools (of any type) tended to regret it in the long run. And again you are at a school that should be capable of getting students into top 10's.
  6. A lot of departments are reluctant to take on students for a second PhD. I have heard of a few, but it is not common. You might find some econ postdoc positions that would be interested in you. Look around and see what you can find. I have come across a few people with STEM PhD's who did a second PhD in a business field at a B-school, but all were people whose first PhD was in a field with little to no overlap with business like Chemistry or Physics or Biology, never someone from CS/Math/Stat. However, it might be a good idea to look at postdocs in B-schools in departments that have overlap with your interests. B-school departments are generally a little more interdisciplinary than econ departments, and I have come across a few B-school postdocs with PhD's in other fields doing research in stuff that overlapped with relevant B-school fields. For example in your case you might find overlapping interests in Management/Strategy, Operations Management, Managerial Economics, Decision Sciences, MIS, etc. The AACSB started a program a few years back called "Post-Doctoral Bridge to Business" to allow people with PhD's in non business fields who want to do research in business related fields to move into business school jobs, but the only participating school (AFAIK) is U Florida and I suspect it is more oriented toward people who want to do empirical work. There are also at least two universities I know of that allow PhD students in almost any related non-business field to do a joint/dual PhD with a related business school field - CMU and Rutgers - and I have heard of a few more allowing this on a case by case basis. If you are at such a school, that might also be an option for you (again, this relates to the somewhat more interdisciplinary nature of business schools). Also, if you are interested in micro theory and getting a good academic job afterward, you will probably have to aim higher than 30-100. I can think of very few theorists in econ who did not graduate from top 30 programs. In fact I know of quite a few people who graduated from top 10 programs as theorists but have spent their entire careers doing empirical work. I still think you should take your school's micro theory course which may help getting an econ or business post doc, even if you don't go for a second PhD. And don't worry about a lack of formal math classes, since you are doing a CS Theory PhD and therefore obviously have a solid math background.
  7. What is your academic background besides for the MBA? Any research experience? Who would be your letter writers? To be blunt if you are aiming to get into a serious research oriented finance PhD, the MBA will not help much beyond perhaps giving you some access to letter writers. The finance coursework for most MBA programs has almost no relation to the type of coursework in a finance PhD which is much closer to the type of coursework in an economics PhD. I don't know of too many people with MBA's who have gotten into US top 75 finance PhD programs in recent years and those who did either had the type of profile that would have enabled them to get into a PhD straight from undergrad anyway, or had undergrad degrees in math or engineering, or had also done masters degrees in something like quant finance or statistics or a PhD track economics masters. Minimum math for a decent research oriented finance PhD program to even give your application a look is multivariable calculus and linear algebra and you probably will also need to add a calc based probability class and a stats/econometrics class. And that is just to even have a chance. If you are willing to look a little farther down the rankings, you will probably find programs willing to look at someone with weaker formal math background though multivariable calculus and linear algebra will probably still be necessary. But these programs are typically less research oriented and tend to place their graduates at lower ranked business schools that concentrate on teaching. If you want to stay in Australia, I can't comment anything specific about the universities there.
  8. It is still relatively early and you don't seem definitively set on the program that accepted you, so just wait a couple more weeks. Any DGS will understand why you want to wait a little longer to make a fully informed decision. A lot of people dislike when someone gets into a significantly better program which they will definitely choose over the lower ranked program but still does not inform the lower ranked program that they are turning down the offer. That is not your situation here.
  9. 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.
  10. Finance PhD student, married, started the PhD with two kids under age 5 and had another one summer between first and second year. A couple other students in my program are married and had little kids either when they entered the program or during the program. In some ways it is tougher, with childcare being the biggest factor. If you are in the US, a number of states have childcare subsidy programs for parents who are working or are full time students, though you need family income below a certain level in order to qualify. In my case we were able to qualify for a small subsidy my first two years, and it was enough to keep us from having to go into debt (in my third year my wife received a promotion with a significant raise at her job). Some universities have discounted childcare available for graduate students. Email or call them to find out. No matter what, you will have less time available to study than single students without children. On the other hand, having family to emotionally support you is a big help - PhD students have some of highest levels of anxiety and depression and having a supportive significant other and having children to play with and distract you at times definitely helps. Whether to buy or rent depends on where you live. But many universities have some form of graduate student family housing for full time students who are married and/or have children, and this is usually cheaper than renting in the area especially after utilities are taken into account.
  11. UCLA and UCSD are both top 20 programs. Which of the two is better depends on your subfields/interests since they have different strengths. I think UCSD has placed slightly better the last few years. The other 4 are all top 50 programs but definitely a step below UCLA/UCSD. Again, which is "best" depends on your subfields/interests. Too many people concentrate on a precise ranking like US News or their own subjective ranking, but you should be looking at things in context of tiers, top 10, top 20, top 50 etc. Within a given tier different schools tend to be roughly comparable in terms of educational quality and placement, but once you get outside the "top 10" schools are usually not able to maintain a large enough department to be strong in every subfield. In general, assuming you are funded at both choices, always pick a school in a higher tier unless it does not fit your interests at all (and if it does not fit your interests at all you probably should not have applied there). But if two programs are in the same tier and one program has a slightly higher rank than another according to some ranking like US News, but the slightly lower ranked one is a better fit for your interests and funding is similar, then go to the one that better fits your interests. I am not familiar with COL, crime etc for California so I can't help you with that.
  12. We may finally be able to settle the GRE useful/not useful debate, though we will have to wait 6-7 years to see the job market results of this cohort.
  13. I suspect a lot of the econ stuff on GC right now is EJMR trolls. In fact, I know that a number of graduate programs still do not know how many funded slots are available this year, and might not know until late February. We have a lot of data (both here and on GC) from past cycles on when various programs tend to send out their offers and while every so often a school changes their pattern, it is extremely unlikely that 5 top 15's are all simultaneously sending out offers extremely early.
  14. I've been around here for a very long time and I can only think of a handful of applicants with profiles as strong as yours (assuming all your math and grad econ classes are A/A-) and all got multiple funded top 10 admits.
  15. With your background I think you would be better off looking at accounting PhD programs than econ PhD programs. You have an accounting background and a pretty good math and econometrics background for an accounting PhD applicant. Accounting research is not like practical accounting and for many subfields significantly overlaps with econ and finance. In fact at many schools the accounting PhD students take micro and metrics together with the econ and/or finance PhD students. Take a look at some of the recent papers published in the "top 3" accounting journals - Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research and The Accounting Review- to get an idea of what is currently being done. At the same time, accounting PhD programs do like people with an accounting background and some work experience, and having a CPA will help a little, though a lot less than you might think. The accounting PhD job market is much better than econ too, Average 9 month salary (i.e. not including any extra for summer teaching or other extra activities) for an assistant professor in accounting across all AACSB schools is around 140k (AACSB puts out an annual report on this). That type of salary for an assistant professor in econ is only possible with a placement at a top tier school. And unlike econ, nearly every student who graduates with a PhD in accounting from an AACSB accredited school -even a lower ranked one- is able to get a TT position. Additionally, nearly all b-school PhD students get full funding which is not the case in econ, especially at schools outside the top 20. And since most programs accept both GMAT and GRE you could even apply this cycle, though if you want to do that I would advise getting some accounting LOR's, bur econ LOR's will be fine and I know a few accounting PhD students who got into good programs with all or mostly econ LOR's. Obviously this is only a good option if you think you will find the current accounting research interesting. I see the interests you list and with the exception of public policy there isn't much overlap with accounting research (PP has some overlap), but as I mentioned above, look at the top tier accounting journals and you might find some of the stuff more interesting than you think.
  16. Only two of those -Pavoni and Hou- actually have multiple PhD's (and I agree with you, I have no idea why they did it). The others started PhD's at one university then moved to higher ranked university after the 2nd or 3rd year, which usually entails restarting the program, and is not a move that I would recommend without an advisor at the current program specifically advising a student to do so. To answer the OP's original question, I have come across a number of people with multiple PhD's in finance or other business fields, but it is almost always someone who did a PhD in a STEM field (most often physics or engineering) but at a lower ranked university, ended up doing business or econ related work and decided to use their newly developed business interests as a way to get into academia by doing a business PhD. To build on what startz commented, if you only got into a 50-70 econ PhD program, why would a significantly higher ranked business, stats, math or policy PhD program take you? And if it were an equivalent or lower ranked program, what would you gain? If anything the academic job market is much tougher in math and stats and tacking on a low ranked math or stats PhD will not help you on the econ job market. And most business or policy PhD programs will not take someone who already has an econ PhD because it is considered too close a field. If you really truly have interests in business or policy and don't only want to do business or policy because you think the academic job market is easier (and for most business PhD's it definitely is) then maybe you should think seriously about your interests now and consider re-applying to business or policy PhD programs this cycle so you can switch over to those fields before you have spent too much time on your econ PhD. But this only makes sense if you truly feel you have interests in those areas not just because of an easier job market.
  17. Going to a decent masters program makes up for the unranked bachelors, but most of the MSc Finance programs are more industry focused so it probably did not give you rigorous finance or economics coursework. The math background will hurt a lot at the more competitive programs on your list. MOOC's vary in quality and it is hard to gauge how admissions committees will look at them. Lack of exposure to proof based classes will hurt a lot for the more competitive programs on your list. The econ department at Rice University sometimes offers an online version of their Econ PhD Math Camp in the fall (they always offer it in the spring/summer). It would give you a good idea of the level of math expected for the first year core classes at most of the schools on your list. I think that you should focus a lot on schools which have active faculty who match your research interests. I would not bother with the Stevens Bus Admin PhD program. While it is a more traditional PhD program than the FE program it is not well regarded. Just to give you a explainer on what I mean, in finance you frequently hear people talk about the top 3 journals, Journal of Finance (or JF), Journal of Financial Economics (or JFE) and Review of Financial Studies (or RFS). While there are other good journals, these three journals are looked at as a good rough proxy of a department having quality productive faculty. If a PhD granting school does not have at least some faculty publishing articles in these 3 journals then it is probably not worth it to go for a PhD since it means they don't have respected actively publishing faculty. You can also use it as a rough proxy for department rank, though you do somewhat need to adjust for faculty size. UT Dallas has a website with Business School productivity rankings that allow you to choose which journals you use. Using the 3 journals mentioned above from 2010-present, or almost 11 years, Stevens has 0 top 3 publications. Of your dream schools Toronto has 69, Rochester has 38, Stockholm has 24 (though if you add in other departments that number is probably closer to 35-40), and Tinbergen has 8 (though it is regarded a little higher than what these numbers indicate). Of your target schools, Purdue has 35 (and I would consider them at the moment to be close to Rochester in quality), Rutgers has 21, Utah has 40 (but with a 60% larger faculty than Purdue or Rochester so it is not quite as well regarded as those 2 but still quite good), Alberta has 16, Bonn has 4 (plus a few more from Econ dept faculty) and Texas Tech has 2 (but had 3 in 2009). So you can see that Stevens is just not in the same research territory as the others (in fact Stevens has not had a top 3 publication since 1990 which is as far back as the rankings go).
  18. In order to give any advice, I would need some more information on your bachelor's and masters like what major, approximate rank of university and country. Second, I would need information on your math and statistics/econometrics coursework. Your list of schools seems to be a bit all over the place in terms of location, ranking and research focus with no clear rhyme or reason why you have picked those schools. You have Stevens IT (I assume the FE PhD program) on your list which makes no sense since it is a program directed at industry quants and to my knowledge has never placed a graduate in a TT position at a research university while all your other programs are more traditional PhD programs. Stevens themselves says as much on their website: and Think carefully about which schools you are applying to and why. The C on the masters thesis in an ECTS system is not good, but if you can explain it away as Covid related in your SOP and your LOR's are good it probably will not hurt too much at most of the schools you are looking at.
  19. To answer your questions 1) The undergraduate GPA will not matter much since you have a masters degree with a high GPA from a top school. I will discuss your potential issues with getting into a top 50 below, but the UG GPA is not the issue. 2) CFA will not matter much for PhD admissions. 3) Age is not a problem. Business School PhD programs are generally willing to take on applicants in their 30's, especially if they have some relevant work experience. Maybe a few top tier places wouldn't, but you are not aiming for those places. Quite a few people on this board started their PhD's in their 30's, myself included. A few were even over 40. 4) Canadian and US PhD programs of similar quality have similar competitiveness. Now as to getting into top 50 programs, your issues are minimal research experience and only decent references. References matter a lot, and while a professor saying that you took a couple of classes and did well is good, but for getting into good programs you need more informative letters like from a research advisor/supervisor or a professor who has previously helped students get into good PhD programs and can directly compare your abilities to theirs. That is not to say a top 50 admit is not possible -find out from your professors where students from your masters program have previously gotten into and how you compare to them- but it will probably be difficult. Also, how quantitative your masters degree program is could make a difference. Some MSc in Finance programs are more comparable to masters degrees in quant finance and some are more designed around training CFA's and analysts -which is what I suspect your program is. The more quantitative programs will be perceived more positively in the applications process.
  20. The three paper approach is pretty much standard in Business and Econ PhD programs and has been for quite some time. Instead of a monograph that is not journal publishable without significant changes due to length and will rarely be read by anyone not on your committee, you get 3 (hopefully) publishable papers out of it. In general, schools want the three papers to be on related topics, though exactly how related they need to be depends on your advisor and committee.
  21. Post on the econ forum not the introductions forum.
  22. Sorry about hijacking the thread with other stuff. As to your original question, the biggest consideration is why were your grades so poor in your first bachelors? If your overall GPA was pulled down mediocre grades in econ or math classes then the econ masters might be worth it. If your math and econ grades were good and your overall GPA was pulled down by poor grades in other classes, then you can probably apply with your current coursework. Another issue with your application as I see it is in recommendation letters. These matter a lot in PhD applications and you don't mention anything about who they would be if you applied right now. It would probably be a good idea for you to post your full profile in the format commonly used here and on the econ forum. This would help us get a better idea of your qualifications and chances.
  23. I am only familiar with US/Canada but I did a quick check and saw that UNSW asks for all post-secondary degree transcripts and U of Queensland asks for all post secondary education (like HBS). I assume the other major Australian universities are the same. Some schools don't mention it on their websites, but on the actual application they state the full transcript requirement.
  24. Every PhD program that I know of (in every field not just business) requires full academic transcripts for all degree coursework even if the degree was in an unrelated field - let alone the OP's situation where it is in a related field. Many even require transcripts for all coursework taken at accredited institutions even if it was not used towards a degree (for example HBS has this requirement).
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