arieshine

I agree with XanthusARES in that you will limit your US career prospects with a Norwegian degree. That being said, I hear Norway's not a bad place to live :-P Edited to say: Sorry for the late reply, my forum haunting tends to be in erratic sprints.

A prospective student visited my school this past spring and made a generally terrible impression on the faculty so please consider the following a list of don'ts. The visitor had emailed prior to their visit to set up various meetings with professors and PhD students, most of which occurred seamlessly. When the most famous professor in the department, perhaps also the school, last-minute canceled their meeting with this visitor, they complained openly and commented on what a bad impression that made. (A professor that I, at the end of my first year, still had not obtained a meeting with due to their incredibly demanding schedule.) The visitor asked very aggressive questions to current students about their likes and dislikes of the program and personal perceptions of the faculty, even beyond what I would have even felt comfortable sharing with my fellow students. After leaving, the visitor did not email anyone to thank them for their time or insights about the program. This person was not accepted.

Hi Aspirant, a) If you could score at or above 700 on the GMAT, I think this would help your profile. In order to weed out the massive number of PhD applications, many schools start by tossing those that do not meet a minimum set of qualifications. These vary at each school and no school wants to disclose their process, but test scores are commonly one factor for early weeding. b) I do not think so, you are slightly above average but plenty of OB students begin the PhD in their mid-thirties as a second career. c+d) This depends on where you want to live later on. If you would be happy to stay in Europe, assess how well you truly like this program. If your heart is set on working in the U.S. you may be better off finding a school that is either slightly higher ranked or around the same rank but in the U.S. Otherwise you could take your pre-tenure career in Europe and transfer to a U.S. school later on when your research profile is more established. Question for you: If you only applied to less than 10 schools, why did you choose back up programs you did not actually want to attend? I understand it's disappointing that you did not get into your first choices, but it's also important to decide beforehand a list of schools you are willing to attend so that neither you nor those schools waste the time and effort involved in the application process. More generally, be sure that your idea of a school's ranking is not based on their MBA program... or even too much on the faculty publishing rate... but on the PhD placements, data that should be made available on the program's website. Too often students get into a lure of wanting to attend schools based on the MBA reputation and this doesn't equal the best PhD training. In addition, prolific advisors are great but can also be terrible mentors to others. Program alumni are the best indication of the program's quality, in my opinion. All in all, best of luck.

I've seen a trend of students taking 6 years recently, probably due to the bad job market that happened a few years ago. I'm hoping it's temporary as most schools don't fund the 6th year they push students to take.

Discipline/Concentration: Management Admission Year: Fall 2012 Test Used for Admittance: GRE Test Scores: Q 86%, V 98% Undergrad GPA: 3.2 Graduate GPA: 3.9 Industry Experience: 5 years in a not-for-profit organization Research Experience: 6 years "on the side": 3 years undergrad, 3 years postgrad Range of Schools Applied: UTD Top 40 Total Schools Applied To: 6 Total Offers Given: 2 Final Remarks: Compared to a lot of people, I waited a long time to apply. I learned a lot about research and what it's like to have a career in academia. I only applied to programs I would attend without hesitation, and I was willing to apply more than one year if necessary in order to attend a competitive program. Because I applied to such a small number of schools I was able to spend a lot of time on each application, rewriting nearly all of my SOP each time. In each SOP I named at least one professor whose work interested me and usually commented on ideas I had from one or two of their recent papers. That being said, I still felt insecure during my application process and never could have predicted the outcome. Having a paid RA position for a few years is a huge asset and I would recommend staying at least two years. This used to seem like an unreasonable commitment to me but now I understand: research is a slow-moving field compared to other industries; you can't code data for three months and get a stellar LOR. My letter writers were professors in my field who wrote very kind things in part because they knew me really well after working together for several years. I always had a Plan B (alternative career path) so I wouldn't be too crushed if I wasn't admitted. Throughout the process and the PhD, I keep in touch with a lot of non-academic friends who wouldn't judge me (or notice) if I didn't get accepted or failed out later on. It is a nice sanity check. If you're aiming for Management/OB, do not stress too much about the grades or the test scores. These departments look for students with the most creative, promising ideas, sometimes with research experience and sometimes straight from industry. The best strategy is to demonstrate (1) that you understand what research is and (2) that your interests match with those of faculty so they see you as a good "fit".

Take a look at the schools' curricula. From my experience, as well as the experience of my friends in other business PhDs, the first year would be hard if not impossible to commute to because it's a full plate of courses, 4-5 days a week. I could have lived in a great city one hour from my campus and was really glad I didn't for the first year. I think it would be exhausting and the time and money costs for commuting would be immense. It's easier to live a commuting distance away once you've passed your program's comprehensive exam and are only coming in a few days a week. If you applied to all four programs and only got into the distant two, would you be willing to spend the first year renting a place for the week and traveling home on the weekends? I know someone who was married and did this. I don't think it was fun, but they survived and now live together quite happily, so for them it was worth the temporary separation.

INSEAD - Economics & Political Science

I can't speak for Strategy, but for OB what you've proposed with Calc II and Probability sound fine. Keep in mind that schools differ slightly in the required coursework for incoming students. What's most helpful would be for you to look up the req's for strategy PhDs at the schools you are targeting, and use that as a guide. But don't sacrifice time you could spend on research projects for those courses.

I wouldn't worry about the B grades as you're well over the bar for PhD programs, which I would set around a 3.5. Anything higher won't put you above another candidate. Same goes for your GRE, which is great. What you lack is research experience. Your competitors will have years of this on you and it counts more than grades, GRE, and any applied work experience combined. My advice would be to reach out to the professors of business schools nearest to you and find out how you can become an RA, even if you do it unpaid for 8-10 hours per week. Show interest and willingness to help them with any projects they need it on, even if they aren't exactly what you want to study later on. The ability to talk about those projects as an insider is key to getting admitted to the top schools. Good luck!

It turns out Columbia hasn't made any Management offers yet: both macro and micro interviews were on-campus yesterday. This makes me curious about the original poster...

Thanks! I've already applied but I will apply this method and see if it reflects my intuition about which program is my best fit.

Is anyone else willing to name schools for this list? Or do you all agree it can't (or shouldn't) be done?

Thanks! The more you know...

possible_phd, what's CCT?

Post approved! Discuss...