cyrilfiggus

I really, really apologize if that's how I came off. My intent was not to be dickish at all, and I am sorry if that's how it came off. I am new to posting to internet forums and, as I am learning, it's a bit of an acquired skill. Much easier to lurk than it is to put together a statement that doesn't somehow offend somebody.

Spivakisgod, Thanks for your reply. I really appreciate the honesty and straightforwardness. That was the impression that I had, as well, that I might be short of what is needed. I understand that the programs are quite competitive and that I am probably lacking enough critical math components (though, as I highlighted above, the actual gaps b/tw what I've taken and what are required are not that severe, really 2-3 classes - ODEs and Real analysis, which is listed as optional). All of which are arbitrary anyway, as, 4 years out, I would have to spend a few months reviewing all of the content that I learned in the past before actually being able to use it again. Basically, your suggestion is go get work experience as an RA to an Econ prof while taking coursework in ODEs and Real Analysis. The next question I would pose to you is: is this best done through a Masters program or should I just strike it out on my own and get a j.o.b.? I know that econ research jobs don't grow on magical job trees, but I know a handful of people who have taken such positions in the past.. Let's say that I am highly committed to getting into one of these programs. What's the best path forward? Does the title of Masters degree matter at all, or would direct work experience be just as good? I know that Stanford GSB's research fellows program exists (and I am sure is highly competitive), but am unaware of similar types of programs (formal or informal) that do something similar. Any advice on that front? Also, could you substitute working directly with a professor for working in a behavioral economics lab? I'm thinking of places like J-PAL, IFPRI, where you'd be working on experiments with PhDs, but not directly under professors in a university setting. Would those substitutes work? Again, as Econ2011 politely pointed out, the internetz may not be the best place to be asking these questions. That said, I'm still grateful for any advice that you could give.

Woops, 100% correct! High 160s, not 170s (though I would take it if offered). Thanks for the catch! I will try to edit the post accordingly

Edited due to replication of information above.

Hey guys, Given the amount of hatred that I have received over what I believed to be a fairly inane post, I am editing the original to cover only the essential criteria. Top 5 US undergrad here GPA: 3.8/4.0 GRE: Haven't taken. Practice test scores in mid-to-high 160s Econ/Math: Calculus I/II, Linear algebra / multivariable calculus, Stats, Applied econometrics, intro micro, intro macro, intermediate micro, development economics, Political economy of random Asian country, mix of A's and B's across the board Other courses: Political economy, other political science courses Prof recs: Couple of good ones, but likely from Polisci depts, potential for a couple of prominent econ recs, but prospects questionable Research experience: RA'd to econ prof, pursued field work overseas under fellowship on political impact of trade agreements, worked in research for US Govt, Work experience: 2 years mgmt consulting, 2 years ag development work I am mostly looking at ag/applied econ programs. I have a strong interest in ag, particularly as it relates to development, and have relevant work experience in the area. Some Ag/applied programs explicitly state that work experience can help to offset weaknesses in other part of the application. I might also look into some programs in public policy & business. Based upon my background, I have a couple of questions: How competitive am I for top programs in the ARE/Applied space? To what extent can work experience compensate for academic shortcomings? The Berkeley ARE website suggests that they can be substitutes, but I have no clue on the extent to which this is the case. How much does it harm you to have recs from people outside of economics? I think I could swing a couple of Econ recs, but my stronger recs would definitely be in Polisci What are my biggest deficiencies? If you gave me two extra years, what are the best ways to rectify them that you have seen successfully used?

Just adding on to my last post. I wasn't trying to downplay the importance of rankings. I actually found this under their "International Business" sub-field Can anyone confirm that they've seen a similar ranking before? I know that ranking isn't everything and they actually have several interesting sub-areas that align directly against some of the things I mentioned above (e.g., there is someone studying disapora impacts on development, another studying transparency & SOEs). I just did some googling of old students and I found one person placed at GWU as an adjunct faculty member and one person placed as a professor at The Catholic University of America, which is brand new and known as rather conservative-leaning. It would be interesting if there were more data points.

Xanthus, Thanks again for the advice. I think you did a better job than you are giving yourself credit for at "finding the area of interest" that was hidden in a lot of what I described above. I think, if I am honest with myself, my interests are probably a bit more defined and earnest from the business perspective when I focus in clearly on HR and entrepreneurship. When I really think hard about the disciplines themselves, as opposed to things like the industries to which they could be applied, I find myself naturally gravitating towards papers that fit clearly within existing scholarship around HR and entrepreneurship, particularly things like: Contracting, contingent staffing, and the transition to a "21st century" labor market Talent management and skills-building - particularly the interplay b/tw firm and labor in training employees vs them obtaining skills externally Skills-building, technology transfer, and its broader link Compensation Board governance - selection of board members (especially from narrow pools) and its impact on governance Broader definitions of "entrepreneurship" - social entrepreneurship and its limits As well as a couple of things around corporate-govt interactions Corporate "consultation" vs "collusion" in policy-making Economic development corps and other business incentives to attract investments If I am honest with myself, these are the unique, more business-specific issues that keep me up at night, or that I find myself endlessly exploring outside of my professional field, talking with friends until they shut me up, etc. I might be trying a bit too hard to preserve flexibility and to tie all of my experiences together into one neatly flowing research interest. As a result, I might be "compromising" a bit and selling myself short on broader passions. I am still very interested in applying the challenges above to the developing world / emerging markets, but that's not the essential component. The functions stand on their own as things that I am passionate about and, frankly, may just not neatly fit with my other interest areas around development/policy more broadly. I might need to accept this, divide up my interests into clear, distinct, focus areas and decide whether or not I want to stick with one vs the other for a long-term career. I can see very clearly how your loss of focus might happen. I did take a look at GWU, but not Old Dominion. There appears to be some interesting stuff by the GWU faculty, especially around international business. A couple of red flags though, were that I could find no information on placements, and they were ranked #87 in the UT Dallas rankings. Are some of their departments particularly exceptional? I'd love to hear a bit more why you chose those two schools as examples. Thanks again

Hi Xanthus, Thanks again for your reply. Also, I took the time to research some of your old posts and found lots of good advice. It looks like you have been very active in these forums. I wanted to say thanks for taking the time to provide input and apologies if a newbie like me asked questions that are presumptuous, arrogant, or just plain ignorant. I also wanted to apologize for littering my original post with so many spacing errors. I was typing on my phone rather furiously after having lost the original post in a computer crash. Also, I'll go ahead and say that this is a longer post. Writing it helped me sharpen my own thinking a bit, but brevity suffered as a result. Glad to hear that my math background is, more or less, in line with what is required. I recognize that there is still quite a bit of work to be done in researching programs beyond the obvious name brands, as well as in whittling down the number of disciplines and then applying to them with sufficient depth. I have a whole bunch of additional thoughts on recs/research interests/my background in the rest of the body of this post, but wanted to summarize the big questions that I have upfront, given that it's asking a lot to read through the whole message: 1) When you say "competitive" what do you mean? Is the Top 10 (assuming good research fit, which I think there is at a few places) completely out of the question? Top 25? Top 50? 2) I understand what you mean about focusing, but at the same time, I want to maximize my chances of getting into the best possible school that I can. I hate to say it, but, at this point, I am either sufficiently not differentiated enough or sufficiently arrogant enough to think that I can approach my interests from different enough perspectives that I would only apply to "top" programs in a couple of the disciplines mentioned above, with the intention of re-applying if I didn't get in this cycle. In other words, if I miraculously got into a Top 5 Polisci program, I might take that over a Top 25 b-school program. I am not saying that I have some sort of conversion list, just that I want to be serious about my interests and the fact that they can be approached from multiple lenses. Do you have any thoughts on my relative competitiveness for other programs, or is that sufficiently outside your area of expertise to comment? My take is that I have a fair shot at a Top 15 Polisci PhD program (presuming, again, that GRE scores meet practice test expectations, that prof recs are mostly in Polisci disciplines), a long shot at a top 5 public policy PhD program (given the few slots, plus the fact that I don't have a masters, which prevents me from applying to about half of the schools I am looking at. If you read the "current students" blurbs, though, I think I have both an equivalent "blurb" and the potential for equivalently relevant, coherent research topics), a long-long shot at Ag Econ at, say, Berkeley or Cornell (Berkeley ARE explicitly states that it will downplay the weight of your math/econ prep if you have work experience that is sufficiently relevant to the program's research interests - that I do. By the time of application, I will have spent 2.5 years doing strategy development / policy analysis in agricultural work internationally and domestically) , and virtually no shot at a Top 50 Econ program (my lack of real analysis is a non-starter. That's all I hear). Do you agree/disagree with this generalized assessment? If so, where would I fall for business schools? 2) Let's say that I am giving myself 3 application cycles max (that would leave me just below 30 when entering a PhD program), including this Fall, to get into the best program that I can. I think my current strategy is to apply to "top" programs (both those of arbitrarily sufficient rank with good research fit and those that have a knockout, home-run research fit with me and are still decently ranked) across a couple of disciplines (not just business PhDs, but probably also public policy, and maybe even some polisci), as well as to some Masters degrees in public policy and other MA programs that would give me a shot at research experience and better professor recs in the even of failing to get into a PhD program. I would then reapply to PhD programs again in my second year with a similar strategy, then cast as wide a net as possible (e.g., double-down on one discipline and apply to 15-25 schools mixed with a good distribution across rankings just in that discipline). I understand that the purpose of a terminal Masters is not to get into a PhD program, but I have personally encountered, as well as scanned from current PhD student profiles, more than a few PhD students in b-schools and in public policy schools with terminal masters degrees (including plenty of people who did their undergrad at US unis, so it's not just an international student thing). There even seem to be unspoken pipelines between Masters and PhDs at some schools (the MPA at WWS at Princeton and its PhD program are good examples). Is this a feasible plan or an insane one? Are there better Masters degrees to apply to than public policy schools? If my business interests lie in management/strategy, would I still be better off getting a more tools-oriented masters degree? I could see how some might view diversification as a sign of insufficient commitment. I don't see it that way. 3) If I failed to get into a top program this year, my holy grail second choice would be to get into a highly respected terminal Masters program with some degree of funding (let's say WWS or SAIS, for example. I know HKS isn't really that into aid). Ideally, this program would give me the flexibility to "tool up" and take advanced econometrics / some additional math, while also getting a degree that could stand on its own in the event that I never get into a PhD program. I understand that such a program would not inherently make me a more attractive candidate to PhD programs, but it would offer me an opportunity in which to improve upon my perceived biggest weaknesses if I pushed for it (lack of quant classes, prof recs in "wrong" fields). Is this a sensible approach? Should I be applying to different types of schools? My biggest concern with taking on a Masters before a PhD is financing. Taking on a lot of additional debt to potentially improve my chances of signing up for 5 years of poverty wages with the possibility of a well-paying job in year 6 does seems like bordering on insanity to me, no matter how much I may want to be a professor some day. 4) An alternative plan is to look for RA-ships starting in the Fall of this year (my contract with my current organization is up in the Fall anyway, so I have nearly one full year between applications and the start of school, regardless of what I do). I was initially planning on using this time to take on a couple of consulting gigs back overseas to continue earning money, as well as to continue to expand my developing world field experience. Instead, I could look for external RA jobs (I know that they exist, but are not always easy to get) and spend the next year working under a professor. This would do nothing to improve my chances this year, but might help me when I re-applied in the following year. I could also potentially take some night or online math courses during this time, as well, to go ahead and beef up on the quant front. Is this an experience that anyone has had? If so, how did you fare? How did you go about finding RA-ships? After reading one of your own other posts on academic LORs, I actually think I may have been selling myself a little bit short on the quality of recs that I could get. I reached out to one of my old professors and received a very positive response. I am planning a trip back to my alma mater later in the summer and will try to meet with her (and ideally a couple of others) in person. I still think my "best" recommendations would come from Political Science and one Ag Economics, however, but I could definitely dig deeper and reach out to other professors. I don't think there's any way, however, to spin the fact that I don't have any strong coursework or recommendations in management/strategy directly. Unfortunately, my interest in the subject developed largely during and after my work in management consulting, where I worked on a couple of proprietary research projects around management/leadership transitions and pricing strategies in rapidly changing environments, but both are proprietary projects so talking about them trickier (and, as you mentioned, largely irrelevant, given that it wasn't strict academic work). To be a bit more specific around research interests for business schools, I tried to translate my broad research interest mentioned above into a handful of questions that are more b-school specific that I am deeply curious about understanding in greater detail. I think some of these are pure management/strategy issues, while some cross the line into supply chain and political economy work. I am also trying to strike the right balance between defining "areas of interest" and defining specific research projects. I think for each of the areas listed below, I have a number of potential project ideas that are pretty specific (to the point of having specific locations, field work, and methodologies developed) behind each of these: 1) Strategy/management in emerging markets, both from the perspective of multinationals trying to compete to the development of powerful, domestic firms and the lessons to be learned from these firms (I know the Stanford GSB is doing a lot of work around this, but would love examples of other schools that are doing so, as well) 2) Attempts to build/strengthen/teach private sector/entrepreneurs from a policy perspective: I am primarily thinking in terms of Government/non-profit/donor-driven "private sector development" efforts, but this could also focus on universities, for-profit centers/accelerators, or anyone trying to use policy or educational tools to develop the private sector. This could cover everything from "teaching entrepreneurship" and technical assistance to public-private partnerships, economic development corporations, and aggregation clusters/SEZs to attract foreign investment. I could see approaching this both in an international development context, as well as in an urban development context.I think this area has traditionally been viewed through an economics lens, but I think there is room to examine it from a firm perspective and use much of the language and research developing around entrepreneurship, how people / orgs behave, and what influences them (e.g., a lot of what is done at Wharton comes to mind) 3) Skills and technology transfer. I have a couple of ideas here around things like expat/diaspora communities and the roles they play in skills/tech transfers, both in Asia and in Africa. 4) Compensation, accountability, and performance management, particularly in illiquid or opaque labor markets and environments with perceived "low human capital". Again, I am interested in this through the perspective of things like expatriate pay and factory productivity in areas with few skilled workers or where HR capacity is highly under-developed. 5) "Social enterprises" and "social entrepreneurship" as sustainable development strategies. I am interested in their potential impact on either developing or crowding out local private sector actors. 6) "Impact investing" as a concept, its metrics and target-setting, and examining how opportunities are sourced, the potential for it to successfully put private capital to public use, and the potential for it to crowd out other forms of investment. Then, there are a couple of totally unrelated interest areas that I would also think about exploring, such as: 7) Contract selection processes, networks, and reputation. Specifically, I am interested in examining how decades of work to create greater "transparency" in things like procurement and contract selection have worked or not worked in making processes more efficient. This is particularly interesting to me on issues like international development consulting and the movement of traditional strategy consulting firms into the space. 8) Turnover, staffing flexibility, and short-term contracts. If and how use of consultants, contractors, and presence of high turnover impact long-term firm productivity. My running hypothesis is that firms underestimate the costs of institutional knowledge in favor of 9) Corporate nationalism / internationalism. Comparing and contrasting the ways that corporations act multinationally (e.g., in tax inversions), as well as act nationally (through direct lobbying, participation in trade deals, There are also a couple of specific industries where I have a strong interest. My professional background is in both consulting and agribusiness/agriculture and I can speak to the ag sector with a higher degree of credibility than most others. It also seems to be on the up-and-up in terms of attention paid, both internationally and domestically, because of concerns around food security, loss of biodiversity, and climate change, as well as changes in tastes in both the developed and developing world. I am also interested in manufacturing / global supply chain strategies and professional services (particularly consulting - both in corporate and government/development/non-profit world). I understand that I will need to hone in on 1-2 of these sub-areas and come up with very focused, clear SOPs. I am still in the early, but rapid, process of whittling down the universe of possibilities. I am confident that I will be able to do so if I put in the time and effort (which I am trying to do now). In terms of motivation, I think I am very clear on why I want to get a PhD: I want to work as a professional researcher in a university setting. Having worked a variety of jobs and gone through years of soul-searching now about what does and does not make me happy, I believe that this is where I "belong" professionally. I don't have a romanticized view of the profession and am fully aware of the hardship that it involves and that the career outcomes are uncertain.Given that, I am serious about this endeavor and believe that I am doing it for the right reasons. Where I am struggling a bit more (and the reason I am on this forum) is around figuring out my realistic competitiveness. My first post was an attempt to define the universe of types of programs that I believe sufficiently meet my interests (I am by no means saying the schools listed are the only ones I am interested in, though). As mentioned, I think you can approach my interest area from a variety of lenses (business, public policy, economics, political science, political econ, etc). The appeal to business school PhD programs to me (let's ignore the obvious things like lifestyle/funding/job growth/etc, though obviously those matter a ton too) is that they provide you with interdisciplinary tools and the ability to approach problems from a firm-centric perspective. Given the big, big question that I am interested in (how do you use the private sector as an effective tool to generate growth and employment, particularly in developing countries), this is invaluable. I don't want to get too philosophical on the future of development and all that here, but my general theory is that the firm (or even just "individual as entrepreneur") is likely to become more and more of an appropriate lens through which to view this space. Subjects like economics tend to abstract the firm to an atomized unit, which I think fails to explain a lot of interesting phenomena that account for human/organizational behavior and fundamental appetite for risk (apologies to any economists in the room).I also believe that a lot of the research being done in this space today that is focused on areas like tech/pharma/"cutting edge" industries will have trickle down effects that are relevant to a much broader set of industries. On another level, I fundamentally find business strategy / management issues interesting and important, so wouldn't mind working on them outside of the narrowly defined space that I have outlined above. Would love to get the group's thoughts. Please feel free to shoot down all of my research ideas, show me examples of how it's been done before, crush my spirit, etc. I am aware that this is a learning process, and some serious reality checking might be in order as part of that learning process.

Xanthus, Thank you for your post! Glad you liked my SN. I am surprised it wasn't already taken. To answer a couple of your questions: Undergrad GPA: 3.8 in International Relations from a top 5 US news undergrad GRE: Haven't taken it yet, but have done reasonably well on practice tests (hovering around 165 in both quant and verbal). Plan to take in coming months. As for prof recs, my best rec would be from a prof in political science who served as my personal mentor. I took 3 courses with her (A, A, A+, respectively) and have kept in touch since undergrad. My next best is a Sociologist by training, but works in the Political Science Dept doing development work. My third best prof is an ag economist who I studied with in China. I know that economists prefer economists, but those aren't really the cards that I have been well-dealt. Better than any of those, really, would be my immediate manager, who could write to my ability to break down complex problems, structure out my own workplans, and deliver analytically rigorous work on time and with little oversight, but I know that PhDs want PhDs and, to some extent, you've gotta give the people what they want. In terms of coursework, I took intro micro, intro macro, intermediate micro, stats for social scientists, applied econometrics, development econ, and Chinese political economy. I got a mix of As and Bs in these courses, with intermediate micro being my lowest (B-, I left off the final page of an exam). On the math side, I took a course titled "Linear Algebra and multivariable calculus". This was the only prereq need for virtually any undergrad course in the social sciences. It spent the first couple of weeks showing us multivariable calculus looks suspiciously like regular calculus, then rest of the time familiarizing us with the nomenclature and basics of linear algebra. I think it was shy of the true linear algebra and real analysis courses favored in most econ programs.At the time, it hadn't occurred to me to take more math, as math for math's sake felt silly to me, and nobody ever said to me "hey, you might need this for an econ PhD 6 years from now" My research interests are around ways to channel private capital towards replacing public services in places where public capital is either retreating or failing (particularly in rural areas of developing countries). I think this subject can be approached from a variety of angles and am such thinking of applying to a broader range of schools: B-schools: Focus would be on firm-level strategies / incentives for providing services to rural/disadvantaged communities. Another topic is around whether or not private sector acceleration projects are effective and why or why not. There is an even broader topic here around "how does strategy work in developing contexts" that a lot of b-schools are examining at this point in time Public policy schools (HKS Public Policy, SAIS, Fletcher): Focus would be on whether or not govt/donor efforts to support private sector development were or were not effective, again with a focus on the ag sector ARE Schools (Berkeley, Cornell, Maryland, Davis): Same focus as above, but with greater focus on farmer incentives for adoption, as well as service provider incentives to market to farmers Political Economy schools (Stanford GSB, HKS PEG, etc):Similar focus, but greater influence on role of private sector in rural development in sense of leading to equitable, poverty-reducing growth. Another focus area might be around the tendency of private sector actors to corrupt or divert growth to rent-seeking activities and determining what level of "consultation" eventually becomes "collusion" I have so far strayed away from the more traditional disciplines such as Political Science and Economics. My main reason is a bit biased and is because, anecdotally, I know a higher percentage of insufferable people who go into those fields. There seems to be a more direct ivory tower elevator in these programs that limits experience outside of either academia or research centers (one idea of "going out into the world"). I am sure this is heavily biased, but I get excited when I see professors who have more diverse work experience or even academic experience in other fields or elsewhere from their PhD. For better or for worse, I tend to find these people more credible. From the research that I have done, I feel like I see that background in greater detail in b-schools and policy schools than anywhere else. Anyway, I hope my additional commentary helps clarify to some extent. I would greatly appreciate any additional advice based upon the whole variety of points I have thrown out there.

Hi everyone, I am a prospective business school PhD applicant looking at strategy (as well as some political economy) programs. I have a strong GPA from a top US undergrad program (Polisci/IR major), solid GRE scores, ~4 years work experience (2 at a management consultancy, then 2 doing private sector development work overseas) and believe that I can write a good research proposal and personal statement that is anchored in my work experience. I understand that work experience is not that important for PhD admissions, but, in my case, my work has been an important part in figuring out why I want to go into academia and in figuring out the areas of research in which I want to contribute. I have one professor who I have kept in steady touch with and who could write me a solid rec, and could probably wrangle a couple of others that would be ok, but not amazing (I am 4 years out of school, so the relationships are starting to get a bit stale). I also have a couple of ex-managers who could attest to the intellectual rigor to which I approached my work, but I understand that such recommendations will be less respected than academics. That said, my biggest concern is around my research experience. As an undergrad, I actually did a couple of research-related things: Served as an RA for two quarters to Economics professor in my sophomore year. I didn't do anything particularly intellectually engaging. No complicated econometrics. It was mostly desk research and a lot of menial work around organizing bibliographies, following up on editing tasks, etc. I'm not particularly "proud" of this work, but, technically, I was an RA. Worked at a government agency in a research analyst internship role for a quarter. This research was mostly analyzing open source news, reports, and writing memos from thinktank and congressional events, with some foreign-language translation work involved from time-to-time. My research was actually published in the organization's annual report to Congress, but I (nor anyone of the researchers on the team) was directly credited for contributing to it. Received two research grants from my university to conduct field research overseas. The first was for summer research that I intended to use to contribute to a potential honors thesis. I conducted quite a few qualitative interviews (including several in a foreign language), researched primary drafts of government documents and news reports, and collected quantitative data for further analysis. I continued working on the paper in the Fall quarter of my sr year and received a follow-up research grant for the winter to conduct follow-up interviews (which I did). Then, winter quarter, I ended up dropping my thesis because of another commitment (in this case, it was a student group that I had obligations towards and that was sucking up a tremendous amount of time. I had tried in the Fall to do both and found that ultimately I had to make a choice). Given where my career trajectory is now going, I recognize that it would have been better to have written the thesis, even if it turned out to be terrible, but, at the time, I wasn't seriously thinking about academia and felt an obligation to the organization to own up to the responsibilities that I had agreed to. My question is: is any of this research experience valid for grad school applications? I have always assumed these experiences were worthless because I didn't do any fancy modeling and didn't produce any tangible output, but with apps looming, I thought it worth asking others. Do you guys have any thoughts? Which, if any of these experiences, are relevant for PhD programs? Should I avoid talking about any of the research that I did for my honors thesis because I didn't finish? Is that some sort of academic kiss of death? I am asking because I am trying to get a realistic handle on whether I am competitive for programs in my current state, or whether I need to pursue a Masters first, which I would target towards producing research and building relationships with professors. I would greatly, greatly appreciate any advice that you could give. Apologies if this has been answered before. I tried searching around, but couldn't find a topic quite matching my experience. Thanks for your help!