FabianMontescu

Maybe you just like spending time and money in a Ph.D. instead of spending time and money in something else. You know, like the utility concept that we're supposed to know about? ;-) I left a comfortable post-MBA hugely $100K++ job because I didn't like it. There are days in the Ph.D. that I want to cry, but looking back, it was the best decision I ever made.

I went through this this year, asking for a loan after having had a six-figure salary. If you don't have a family, C is much lower in my equation, so I can definitely see how possible_phd didn't get it. But call one or two financial aid departments to understand it better. It's a very serious decision and these guys do this 10x per day, while we do it once in our lifetime (or some five to nine years!).

If you can read Mas-Collel you'll surely be fine. If you can read Varian, you'll be almost fine. If you can only read Nicholson, then you'll probably be fine for a while... but you better work harder! Mas-Collel is a dry read. And a heavy book.

math or economics

Really, 780 is fine. If you have a B- in Calculus and a C in Probability it will hurt you much more, even with 800Q (as everyone and their mother gets 800Q). I vouch for oldprogrammer's list.

3K per month with two pre-schoolers? Super hard. If you find out your wife is pregnant with a third? Near impossible. In a good/great school? Madness, I say. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Your spouse will need to be onboard or you are going to divorce/quit Ph.D/both. You can always try and quit if you can't take it. If you're lucky, you at least get your Master's after comps. If you're super-lucky, you get by until you're so close to your dissertation that they push you over the line even if you wouldn't be able to do it by yourself.

You can get loans even if you're funded and your tuition waived. Let's say you have a salary S, your waive is W and the cost of living is C and tuition is T. There's a concept of presumed savings (let's call it P), it's the amount of salary that won't enter the computation (I think it's 24K this year). You can get up to: Max(0, T+C-(S-P)-W). So for: Tuition 11K , Funding/Waiver 10K, Salary 30K, P = 24K, C = 30K, the potential max would be T+C = 41K and what you'd really get is 11+30-(30-24)-10 = 25K.

What's your Analytical at the GMAT?

I know for sure that the University of Washington just admitted a 36 year-old and they are very good at Corporate Finance research, so you should definitely focus there. The person they admitted, however, had a 760 GMAT and his MBA grades were a little better, retaking the GMAT would help.