CSFive

Great grades, scores, and recommendations (regardless of who they're from) give you a shot at any program, contingent on your research interests, essays, and/or interviews. Special is who you are, not what you can put on a CV - the finance people are across the hall from my office at Wharton, and while they are great people, many of them didn't come in with Fed experience, publications, or connections to famous people. Some of them are still trying to figure out exactly what they want to do with their lives. There are no guarantees, but if you have the numbers to get a look it's worth taking the chance if you think it's a good fit for you.

I mentioned studying stats and calculus online in my essay, to reinforce my quantitative credentials (didn't have a ton of quantitative courses, and hadn't taken any classes in over a decade). I don't think I mentioned any specific courses, and didn't have any credentials. Not sure if it helped, but it didn't seem to hurt.

To answer the original question, I'd probably trim it, unless you think you can pull off the creative and brilliant image pre-admission (I couldn't).

Same here! I'm also using them to increase my memorability, wearing them to conferences and most of the time when we bring in job candidates (sadly not wearing one today - the weather looked a little too scary for it). Now people comment on how weird it is when I'm not wearing one, which is exactly what I'm going for. I probably have about 15, but hopefully will have many more by the time I'm on the market.

Congrats on the interviews ArcticApplicant and myndfood - crossing my fingers and hoping to see you both on campus soon!

I'm the student rep on my department's admissions committee, and I know we reviewed all applications in December even if they weren't yet complete. We had multiple rounds of review even before the interview stage, and I was told to not worry about missing letters in our first review. For each review the PDF package is generated again out of the online system, so the most up to date information is always used. It may vary a bit by school (especially with process), but I think the third-party technological back end is widely used. Some people also use the online view, in which case they would always have the most up to date information, even if submitted seconds before they start reading it. It is hard for a letter to make a huge positive difference though, especially in earlier rounds (having read several hundred of them) - for the most part they're all glowing. I'm not sure I would notice a missing letter, provided there are at least 2 there - the truly memorable letters are the ones where the reference doesn't think much of the applicant. If they're concerned about it and think it might make a difference, they'll probably check again in the system later in the process, or reach out to you if they really like you and it never shows up. I could also see them never noticing (the PDF printouts are about 2,000 pages each, and I had 3 of them for the initial review, and 2 for the second review). I'm not sure what school/program you're referring to, and this is only one anecdote, but hopefully it relieves some of the stress (if that's even possible in this process)!

Congrats and good luck! :encouragement:

I would lean towards A, because A is still publishing, though the fact that B can talk about research is a small plus (weighed against the fact that the professor isn't publishing it loses some luster though). The fact that you keep in touch with both after many years is probably enough for a very positive recommendation from either - it's pretty rare. You could always split the difference as well, with having one recommend for some, and the other for more.

I didn't take the GMAT, but just barely made the 90% threshold for GRE Q, and was high in the 90% range for V, with Writing about half way between. Overall %tile isn't calculated for GRE, so I'm not sure what that translates to (I'm not even that familiar with the GMAT scoring system). If you think the test will be your main weakness, you might want to consider submitting whatever test is not reported for each school. If you're otherwise awesome, submitting a GRE at a GMAT school means your score will not impact their average at all, and they might be more willing to take a gamble on you. That's even more true if you think you can do better on that other test. It's a gamble, of course, but something to think about.

WI, MN, and Wash U all have great people in strategy. I consider MN highly ranked (in my personal ranking of schools, at least). My stronger score was Verbal, and I did fine with strategy interviews (shoot for 90% in each if you can - that's the cutoff most top schools seem to care about). Your undergrad grades are better than mine (and I was at a teaching oriented school), and you have more research experience and a masters. Is Kansas possible for you? I've met a few strategy students from there who enjoyed the program. What about Chicago/Northwestern? They might be a stretch (the top schools are for almost everybody - I feel extremely lucky/blessed), but if you're geographically constrained, why not give it a shot?

I'll add - some people here are on admissions committees, but that still means they're exposed to the decision making process for a particular department at a particular school, for a particular point in time. Preferences of committees can vary by department, school, and year. The confidence interval around that sample size is pretty big.

I would spend more time talking to your first year mentor, and also find other PhD students from the program who are willing to talk to you and give you advice. There is huge variation between professors even within the same program at the same school. If you don't know who you will be working with, find out as much as you can about each of the professors from your peers, so you can find the best fit for you. Once you've chosen (or are assigned) ask around again to find out what you should expect. It sounds like one person in the program has already told you to just worry about math - find out if everybody agrees on that. Also, whoever you work with probably will not know much about you. If the professor was on the admissions committee, they might remember 1-2 things about you. If they weren't, they probably haven't seen your application, and know even less. Every professor wants a productive relationship, so if you clearly communicate what you're good and what you want to learn, and ask lots of questions, you can make it clear what you're capable of doing and what you're not yet ready for. Even with that, there's a good chance you'll be asked to do something you've never done before, and you'll need to go off and figure it out. Use Google. Ask your peers. Ask questions in the relevant classes. That's part of the job, and spinning your wheels early is good training for later (at least that's what my adviser keeps telling me - I spun my wheels almost the entire first year, and then we dumped the project for a new one). You think about you a lot more than the adviser will - even if you have a terrible month, you can just put in a great week of work, and find some interesting results that you can talk about, and the slate will be clean (for most people - especially in your initial year, but even full professors aren't productive every single month).

As others noted, it can be very tough, but it depends on a lot of factors. I know one person joining the program with kids, but his wife makes decent money and arranged a transfer (international, no less). Another has had two children during the program - his wife also works, making decent money (and her parents recently moved to the area, which helps, but they still do daycare). I'm planning to have kids during the program, and it is very scary, I'll honestly admit. I envy the fact that your child is 6, because that solves the child care equation for much of each school day. Will your spouse be working? That will be a huge part of the equation (my spouse makes about the same as me, but if you double the typical stipend you're looking at what most American families live on - it might be less than you're used to, but that's because you've lived a blessed life). Money remains a huge question though. I can work extra TA gigs, but that takes me away from the family, and may slow my graduation. I might be able to work from home one weekday, with her doing another, and pay less for child care, but it could slow progress in the program (perhaps worth it, to know my kid better), and it might make her less effective at work. We're not even trying yet, but we're taking a finance class right now (Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University - a bit hokey at times, but I think it's a good investment in our marriage and life together). And I think we'll need to do a lot of work on that front before we'll be ready - but then we will be ready, and everything will be fine. If your spouse isn't working while the kid is in school (perhaps because of visa issues?), things will be much tougher in some ways, but perhaps easier in others. You'll likely qualify for government assistance of some sort (child care, food, and maybe more - though again, it may depend on immigration status, if the spouse isn't working for visa reasons - it might not be a problem, but I can't really comment). You'll also have a partner (hopefully) who can help out in other areas - child care may not be an issue, and all meals can be prepared at home (even with a working spouse, we try to do that - I've come to love PB&J sandwiches that I make myself). You will also get to keep more of your stipend (you're supposed to pay taxes on it, and I do - but with a family you would pay less). We jumped off a big financial cliff when I returned to school, and because of our ages we really don't want to wait much longer to have kids. What will it be like? It's hard for me to say - but I know others who have done it. Your situation sounds more manageable than some I've heard, but it will probably still be extremely trying. With the right preparation though (working on your marriage, and your marital finances), I have faith that it can be done. Good luck to you!

In my experience, it doesn't seem like there are strict preferences at the admission level. The "minority" admits are equally qualified in every way. Where I see some differences are in the recruiting, with programs to increase the pipeline of qualified applicants from underrepresented groups, but those are usually run independently of admissions. For example, the PhD program office at Wharton runs programs to increase the pipeline, but the departments have a committee for admissions to the departmental program (management in my case). The committee is just a handful of faculty and one student from the department. Those people vary from year to year, which also means the preferences and standards could vary a bit from year to year, even for a particular program at a particular school (though of course the general philosophy and culture are probably slow to change). There are groups within the department (entrepreneurship, OB, strategy, HR, multinational management, OT), so nobody is going to take somebody they think is sub-par, when they're probably only going to get 1-2 people for their area at most anyway (and many years there will be 0 for a particular area). So, if you were counting on special treatment, you want to focus more on the rest of your application. If you were worried about discrimination against you, you can rest easy, and focus more on the rest of your application. The real challenge is that there are too many extremely well qualified applicants (regardless of demographics), and you want to be the best fit. You can look at the prior year stats, but don't get too caught up on them, because you are missing a lot of information from that snapshot, and it can vary widely by year (check out the internet archive if possible - sometimes you can see prior year stats, and you might be surprised to see that 20% had work experience one year, and 70% the year before that - wild swings can happen with small samples).

You may want to see if any psychology or social psychology programs do research related to organizations, and reach out to those professors as well. Free research help may mean more to professors with [likely] smaller research budgets, and doing research in those areas will be equally helpful for demonstrating an understanding of and willingness to do research in OB. Doing research within your current job can also be helpful, especially since external validity can be a big question for a lot of OB research (but field experiments can be very difficult to run, because few companies are willing to allow research on their employees). If you can find some current questions in OB and explore them within your organization, you can probably write a very compelling application essay (honestly, probably more compelling than having done a few hours of lab work with a local professor). Professors like to believe that their work matters in the real world, and if you can combine research and the real world to outline your research interests and goals, that will really connect with many readers.