imadeit

What does Postrad: top 5 European school master in Finance, average of 70-75%. translate into in terms of class rank? If its a If its a >95th percentile class rank you will probably get a lower top 10 admit. Of course, LOR are key. IE: Can one of your professors honestly say that you are the best student they have ever worked with? Your GRE score looks low. I don't usually think people should rewrite but yours seems significantly below the rest of your profile.

There is a lot of good advice on this forum; however, there is also a lot of group think. Most people here are prospective PhD students who are eager and excited to get a degree. Getting a PhD can be a great decision. For many people it isn't. I wrote this to lay out a pessimistic, "devil's advocate" viewpoint so that people planning to send out applications or planning to start a PhD can give it a rethink and make the decision that is best for them. I'm not sour grapes. I finished a top 10 program and got a good job. On the other hand, I know many people who didn't do as well. I'm in Finance (please don't try to work out who I am from my posting history), these comments may hold to a lesser extent in some other areas. There are benefits to doing a PhD but there are also drawbacks. I've tried to present the drawbacks in the most honest way possible. Of the people who start PhD programs, about a quarter will drop out. Another quarter will regret doing a PhD. If this list resonates with you, there's a good chance you are in the half of planned PhD students who would be better off doing something else. Negatives to Pursuing a PhD 1. You are going to be a broke student for 5 years. If you have a family, things will be hard. If you are single, your lifestyle will be okay, but it will be a student lifestyle. Your smart successful friends from college will be working less and making much more money. 2. You are going to have to work a lot. Doing a PhD you will have to bust *** in the first two years. You are going to have to bust *** in the remaining years if you want a decent job afterwards. If you get an academic job, things don't aren't going to get much better (until you are 36, if they still have tenure in 2026). Most assistant professors at top schools are putting in 60+ hour weeks. 3. "Research" is only a small portion of your work. You'll spend an amazing amount of time proofreading. You'll spend an amazing amount of time waiting in airports. You'll spend an amazing amount of time preparing your slides. You'll spend an amazing amount of time on mind-numbing administrative work. You'll spend an amazing amount of time teaching, with most of your effort going toward the least talented students at your university. Amazing! 4. You are putting your life on hold for 5, likely 6 years. Everyone I know of who had children during their PhD ended up with a bad outcome (drop out or extra year + bad job). Most of the Americans I knew who were in long distance relationships broke up. If you are a man, for the next 5 years you are going to be chasing undergrads who think you are old and creepy or chasing professional women who think you are poor and immature. If you are a woman, you are going to have to convince the partner you found to move to New Haven (for example) with you in two years. If you go out with a PhD student, one of you will have to give up on an serious academic job or you will have to do long distance for year. Most likely, you will likely start looking for serious relationships in a new city at 28. 5. Your chances of getting an academic job have been exaggerated. Let's talk about a cohort of 4 people at a top 10: 1 gets a choice between a top 30 placement in a location they don't like or a top 50 placement in an "okay" location. 1 goes to a school you haven't heard of. 1 goes to industry. 1 drops out. Half the class ends up with jobs that aren't measurably better than you would get from a 1 year masters degree and a couple of years of work experience. You are just as likely to be in that half as in the top half. Things get much worse as you move down the rankings. 6. After getting a job, good luck with tenure. If you fail, you will be ripping out your roots and moving to a new city, with the explicit knowledge that you failed to live up to your department's expectations. Tenure rates vary by field, but figure about a 30% chance. Add to that the stress of awaiting the decision. 7. You are going to have minimal choice with respect to location. You will likely get two or three offers from randomly located schools. Realistically, if you want anything more specific than "East coast" you are going to take a substantial drop in school quality. 8. The academic profession is one of profound rejection. You'll get referee reports where people pass damning judgment on a year of your work without taking the trouble to read beyond the introduction. You'll go to seminars where participants will try to humiliate you. You'll attend conferences where others will publically question the integrity and research results of people not present. 9. Your colleagues are going to be predominantly awkward and antisocial. It's great to work with a bunch of people with the same interests as you. If you want to discuss research at lunch occasionally, you are set. If you want to go out for drinks with your new coworkers, good luck with that. 10. Despite the previous point, the academic profession is also one of nepotism, favoritism, and bias. If you are from an unknown school, good luck getting published in good journals. You'll see papers from big names get published in top journals despite major shortcomings. Your papers have no chance at those journals. 11. Your success and failure will depend on how hard you work and how smart you are. It will also depend, perhaps even more so, on luck. Did you pick an advisor who you get along with? Did the great empirical test you gathered data for work out? Is your research field "hot" this year? Is there a financial crisis? 12. If you are not a native English speaker, some people will value your research less simply because they don't like reading your writing or listening to you talk. You will likely have to put more work into teaching because people won't like reading your writing or listening to you talk. Also see 5 and 7 and think about the trouble of finding a partner who shares your cultural background in your new permanent home in Dallas, Texas.

If the program you are in has a good MBA and you are a reasonable English speaker, you can likely find tutoring work for $50-75/hour after your first year. If you are in finance, can potentially intern at the IMF, a central bank, or another agency. The pay up to about 15k (tax free) for the summer.

1. Get a LOR from one or even both the FINANCE professors. Talk about your interests in a PhD now, ask their advice. Talk again. Read their most recent paper thoroughly and ask them questions on it. Then a month later ask if they would be comfortable recommending you. Be honest with them and be sure to phrase things in a way that they can easily opt out. A "known" writer is much much better than an unknown writer and I doubt the typical finance professor will know any of your current writers. (Refer to Crawford, V. P.; Sobel, J. (1982). "Strategic Information Transmission" for more information.) 2. OP will have a hard time cracking the top 10. I'm not familiar with admissions below that level so I cannot comment. 3. Consider applying to a masters program with the aim of working an RA the summer before and then doing a PhD afterward.

I think you'll get a top 10 admit, likely top 5. Your profile is solid, but not exceptional for a top school. Your LSE professors are who you should ask, they have a better idea of where you would place.

I'd think hard about this. IMO: You will have a hard time getting into top programs as a nonnative speaker with limited research experience and unknown LORs. Doing a PhD at a middling program isn't much better than working as an ASA. I suspect the finance you have been exposed to is in areas not currently researched by finance departments.

Edit: Disregard this post. I misread the OP as stating her MBA GPA was average, without that information I have no comment. I do not want to be overly negative and if you have more experience with Indian PhD placements I bow to your knowledge. I know getting into top Indian business schools is a huge accomplishment. I wrote what I wrote because I see a nonnative English speaker with an average GPA and unknown (to US finance professors) LOR writers who worked for 4 years. I compared her profile with the finance PhD students I know and http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-business/139764-finance-profile-2013-cycle.html and extrapolated.

You should rank based on placements. Such rankings exist for finance, I'm not sure about other areas.

IMO you have good odds at getting into a top 10 Phd in econ or finance. Your English skills are going to hurt you. Need more information to be sure. EG: How many people graduate per year in your department? Has your school placed people to the top 10 before?

Edit: Disregard this post. I misread the OP as stating her MBA GPA was average, without that information I have no comment. From what you described, you have virtually no chance at a top 10 finance admission. I'd say you have a I tell you this so you can avoid wasting money/time. My relatively informed and honest opinion.

Your statement 4 is incorrect. Booth finance attrition is low and they give an MBA as a consolation prize. COL is much higher in NYC than C, although Hyde park is a hole. Since you are living there for 5 years, the area is pretty important. You haven't mentioned research interests, which should probably be your main consideration. Fly out to both and see which you like more.

I doubt either 1 or 2 will help you much if at all. Do research work with the best professor at your school over the summer.

Honestly, I wouldn't suggest it. Managing the pressure of kids + PhD isn't a good combination even with full spousal support.

I think considering money makes a lot of sense if you are credit constrained. It's five years of your life. The difference between living a 25k/year lifestyle and a 35k/year lifestyle is large. With that said, the better schools tend to offer more generous stipends anyway, so things balance out.

IMO your GRE verbal is a non-issue. Things that might hold you back: Low undergrad GPA? Not sure how Chinese GPAs work. Your masters GPA is less meaningful as masters GPAs are hugely inflated. Language skills Not having an established professor go to bat for you I think you will get into a top 20 school. Whether you get into a top 5 school depends on what your LORs say and how well you can express a passion for research in English.

As said, it varies by program and field. I'd suggest getting the year by year attrition for each school you are admitted to. For example, Booth finance actually has fairly low attrition.

No, I was talking about admit days, which is what the original which the original question was about.

I'd suggest wearing slacks with a button-down. Throw on a blazer if it's cold. Most grad students look awkward and uncomfortable in suits, which is a look you want to avoid. IMO wearing a teeshirt and jeans makes you look like a slob (but a lot of people do that).

Only read your first post: It sounds like you don't enjoy it. If you aren't enjoying it now, you probably aren't going to enjoy it in the long run. I'd suggest you try to figure out how to leave with a masters degree and/or transfer into the MBA: ask a professor you can trust (eg one that isn't going to gossip) and/or other students. Then either start looking for a job to start either now or after you have the qualifications for a masters. This forum is populated by people fixated on a PhD and their advice will be biased in that direction. That doesn't sound like it's the right direction for you.

I wouldn't bother. The marginal value of a better verbal score is very low especially if you are in the 77th percentile already and are rewriting. If you, had pneumonia the test day and think you can get a 700 on a rewrite with no studying, then go for it. Otherwise, I'd suggest you put your time into applying to other schools, working on your SOP, talking with your LOR writers about your future prospects, learning latex/matlab, doing actual research, etc...

Does your own school have a business school? The obvious solution is for you to work with faculty there or even try to transfer. Lateraling between schools is going to be really hard. Asking for LOR in an imprudent way may hurt your relationships with faculty. They haven't been funding you with the intent of having you transfer to another school. Tread carefully. I doubt transferring to Chicago/NW finance will be possible. I don't know anything about lower ranked schools and/or management so I can't comment. Keep in mind getting straight A's or A+'s in grad school isn't a particularly strong signal due to rampant grad inflation.

Honest advice: it is going to be a challenging process. Your profile suggests top 50-100 finance PhD's. Given that, it is going to be hard for you two to get into PhD's nearby. However, it is doable. If you are heartset on both doing PhD's, I'd suggest applying for all the schools in the north east, CUNY, SUNY, Boston College, Boston U, Penn State, Rochester, etc. There are lots of schools in the area and if you target well you should be able to get accepted to schools within a 4 hour drive of each other. Then for the first two years, you can alternate driving down to see the other each weekend. After that, you can live in one of the two cities and drive down for important events. It isn't fun but it is doable. But, the real problem will be in 6 years. Getting two academic jobs in different departments in the same city coming from top 50 schools is very very hard. One of you is most likely going to have to take an industry job or a job at a junior college. If you are both open to returning to India, you may have a better opportunity - I know nothing about the Indian job market so check into that. Do some introspection. Decide if the sacrifice is worth it to you. If you want to stay in the US, my honest suggestion is that you would probably be happier if one of you did a masters in economics and got a job and the other applied to PhD programs. EDIT: I realize this post contains nothing about corporate finance. I don't know which schools have strong cf faculty in the range you are looking at. I'd looking at 30+ ranked schools from the AZ ranking http://wpcarey.asu.edu/fin-rankings/rankings/index.cfm . Google each school to see if it is in the north east. For every school in the north east, skim paper titles to see if faculty have interesting sounding papers published in the past few years. If yes, add it to a short list. If no, remove it.

Pricing derivatives isn't really a "phd finance" research area. If you are interested in that, you want a PhD in mathematical finance or statistics, something like CMU's math finance program. Your age isn't important. I think your undergrad GPA will make it difficult to get into a top 20 program. A masters program might give you a chance to improve your grades.

Ok. If you only have a limited amount of applications, focus your applications on where you are likely to be accepted. Has your school ever placed anyone to any of those schools? Do your LOR writers have any connection to any of those schools? If neither of those are true, then you probably shouldn't apply to those schools. tldr; Apply to NYU and Stanford.

I think many people in this thread dramatically overestimate their ability to make money in the private sector. Compare the average Columbia MBA MBA Pay Through the Years - Businessweek to the average finance professor DataDirect Business School Salary Survey . According to this data, the average finance professor's pay is only slightly lower than the average Columbia Business School MBA pay at any given time since starting (even including the three extra years of PhD if you assume repayment of the 250k after tax cost difference in education). The average finance full professor makes 158k, the average CBS graduate makes 193k after 20 years; the starting salary of a finance professor is 127k, the average CBS graduate makes 135 after 5 years; etc. Keep in mind that a majority of CBS students had previous work experience which will bias their salaries upwards. I really doubt that the average CBS grad is working less or is less smart than the average finance prof (who, by definition is at a 100+ ranked business school). These professor's have SLIGHTLY lower salaries than the salary + bonuses of the CBS grads, but significantly better benefits and better job security. The real costs to a career as an academic are the lack of choice in location, academic environment, solitary nature of work, and less extreme upside potential. The real benefits are interesting work, good job security, and flexibility.