tomlac

@phdfinance1: I suggest you arrange a visit to Emory and I am sure you will be impressed by the quality of the faculty and their supportiveness toward students. Every door was open even the most established guys, and people talk like it's a family. Atlanta is a fantastic place to live as well. As for me, Emory is definitely one of my top choices and I'm waiting on a couple of waitlists, so I haven't responded to the offer yet.

Agreed. The reason that I was not enthusiastic about Berkeley was purely due to geographical reasons - I have a two-body problem and strongly prefer to be on the east coast. The faculty is definitely one of the best and after conversing with several of them I found they are very friendly and enthusiastic about their students and are committed to their progress. Now that my two-body is on the verge of becoming one-body (lol!) I'm open to west coast locations as well, so I'd definitely consider Berkeley as one of my top choices.

You are not supposed to pressure others for this kind of decision - it's not an easy decision to be made and they deserve to take their time until they are comfortable deciding one way or the other. Having said that, I'm also on the Wharton finance waitlist, which is "large" according to the coordinator at the visit day. Were you there on the visit day? PM me if so.

Looks like everyone is staying on the same floor lol. See you guys tomorrow or tonight!

I can vouch for Emory as a top notch empirical asset pricing program. I also know many PhD students there and I'd say it is one of the most collegial finance departments in the US. The faculty is very strong (think Jegadeesh, Green, Shanken) and is one of the most friendly and supportive I've ever known. Granted they only placed one cohort so far, but placement has been good and there was a star student there who got many top 10 flyouts. I knew he had a serious two-body problem (one of his cohort is also his wife and Purdue took them both) and he'd definitely be in top 10 if otherwise. I don't know much about UBC but I think you should definitely put Emory on top of your list. Disclaimer: I received an offer from Emory too although I'm still deciding.

Don't know if this is already well known, but for marketing folks, there's a comprehensive list on placements/salaries each year here: http://docsig.org/FinalWWW2010.pdf If you go to the main site you can find info back to 2006. I wish finance had something like this!!

I will be declining my offer from Haas soon. Hope it helps and best of luck!

Here is data on finance PhD placements at top schools « Economics Job Market Rumors Finally! Someone calculated the per-capita output ranks. What do you guys think?

See my post on programming languages: SAS is THE standard for data management and is probably a must learn for all business phds. Even on smaller datasets, there are many routine tasks that excel simply can't handle (think SQL joins, subqueries, etc). Granted, SAS is just a mediocre stats platform, its data management capability and speed are unmatched.

I think PhD courses are virtually impossible to fail (i.e sub-B) if you at least put some time into it. Example: one of my best friends, who has NO (zero) math training in undergrad (not even calculus, he's a philosophy major), was able to get As for all his econ courses in a top 10 quant marketing program. Granted he worked his *** off, but just to say that you don't have to worry if you haven't read MWG for a while (or, in my case, never, lol).

Anyone received an offer from Columbia yet? It seems strange they sent out rejections first...

What?! I haven't received nothing from Columbia. No email, no website update. What does this mean?

Are you staying at the Marriott on the waterfront? I stay there all the time on business trips to Boston. The food there is kinda bad lol but try room service! Good luck on your interview tomorrow!

I received an acceptance email followed by a phone call from Cornell (Johnson). I will probably turn it down soon depending on whether Wharton takes me from waitlist.