dunguyen

I took both the math and stats camps. I agree with win that they are challenging given the material difficulty and time limit, esp the stats part. I'd say the math camp is more intense, but not too hard to understand while the materials in the stats camp are definitely harder. They're even more challenging if you have only minimum math and stats before (LA, one-term calculus, and one or two undergrad stats courses). You'd have to read and practice problems a lot on your own. But they're designed for PhD students so I guess the demanding level is reasonable. If you want to do graduate coursework, you are supposed to work that hard I guess. I can't tell about the signal to ad com these courses have but I believe that they are worth to try in order to prepare for graduate schools, even for PhD students in business schools. They'd give you a sense of the demanding level you should expect in graduate school. Also, as far as I know, most first-year graduate coursework in business schools is similar to that of economics so the math camp definitely helps.

Can anyone please confirm if Rice has sent out offers?

Has anyone heard anything from Wisconsin and Cali at Irvine (Finance)?

Skidoo, you are a great help! I will see what I can do with my lack of math training. After reading many theoretical asset pricing papers, I can somehow understand why schools prefer math students over others. Academic aptitude is surely an important factor and your friend had an excellent way proving his to adcoms. I will try to figure out how to prove that in my application. Applying to >20 schools sounds overwhelming to me, although I know that practice is very common for phd applicants. I can't even imagine how I can write >20 personal statements. Last time I spent about 2 months just to read papers and write personal statements to only 2 schools. But I will apply to as many schools as I can this time. Thanks again Skidoo! Good luck to you too!

Thanks skidoo! Actually I applied for fall 2016 but failed (applied to only 2 schools in top 50 and no interviews).The experience leads me to believe that I should only apply for top >50 (or even >100) this year. So you are saying that my GRE is good enough for top >50? If so should I focus on building stronger personal statement (since I cannot do anything with recommendation letters)? You mentioned math courses. In your opinion, will taking additional math courses increase substantially my chance of getting admitted? Because taking online courses requires both time and financial resources, which I can use for other things like retaking GRE, doing more independent research, developing research ideas for personal statement, etc? Thanks again your opinions. Really appreciate them.

Hi, I hope you can help to see if I have any chance to get admitted to schools ranked 50-100. Thanks a lot! GRE: Q168 (95) V160 (85) AWA4 (56), TOEFL 115 Undergrad: Bachelor of International Trade at a top uni in my country (southeast asia), uni does not rank students but I was in top 5% of class. Thesis topic irrelevant to finance but got max grade. Math courses: linear algebra, calculus I & II, prob. and stats, econometrics. Grad: MSc of Financial Analysis at a UK uni (top 20 of UK), uni does not rank students but I got dean's commendation for highest performance in my cohort. Thesis topic relevant to finance with distinction. Since master, I have taught at a finance department at a uni in my country and been there for 3 years. I have had several papers but only presented them at my faculty research seminars and they are all unpublished. The research are not radical, I just replicated (at smaller scope) some journal-level papers that I am interested in. I don't know if adcoms consider this a plus. I also passed lv3 CFA exam, but I doubt that PhD adcoms would value this achievement. LoR: 2 from my master supervisors (they publish at minor journals), 1 from head of my current department whom I co-teach and research with (again she is relatively unknown in world academia but publish many papers in my country). I'm into asset pricing and all schools have faculty specialized in this field so school choices are not weighed heavily. However I do have some ideas about which aspects of AP I want to do research on so I will take this into account when looking for PoI. Besides the question about my chance getting admitted to 50-100 schools, what else do you think I can improve? Should I retake GRE? Should I take additional grad math courses? Or should I aim for >100 schools?Many thanks. \Du

Congratulations Yongsan! Hope you will get into your dream school. I applied to Fisher OSU but haven't heard anything, and with you (and certainly others) waitlisted I'm sure I must be out. Just wonder why they haven't sent rejection emails (the application status is still pending?). Would you mind sharing your profile via inbox? And by any chance if anyone has heard from Tinbergen Institute, please let me know. The info will probably help end my waiting for this application season. Thanks a lot!

Hello, I am an international graduate seeking to apply for a US PhD Program in Finance. Please help evaluate my profile and thanks for having this useful thread! Test Scores (GMAT/GRE): GRE Q170 (98 percentile), V153 (59 percentile), AW4.5 (80 percentile) Undegrad GPA: 8/10 Bachelor of Commerce in Vietnam, relatively good grades in economics, calculus and statistics, average grade in econometrics (roughly 3.5/4 on US grading scale, top 10% of class at the top university in Vietnam) Graduate GPA: 81/100 MSc Finance at an UK university (top 200 of world universities, Dean's Recommendation for outstanding achievements in the cohort) Research Experience: MSc Thesis and 2 working papers (no publications) I researched at the current employment . Teaching Experience: lecturer in finance at a well-known university in Vietnam, Work Experience: 2.5 years teaching experience in major finance-related subjects (fundamentals of finance, financial systems, portfolio management, computational finance, econometrics) at bachelor programs, also passed the level III CFA exam. Concentration Applying to: behavioral corporate finance Number of programs planned to apply to: 4 to 5 (I know I should spread my application widely but I want to sacrifice the breadth for the depth, spending more time to understand the few suited programs and focus on them) Dream Schools: Chicago Booth, Stern NYU, Kellogg Northwestern, Ohio State, Rotman Toronto (mainly because these schools have notable faculty or at lease interests in my interested research area) What made you want to pursue a PhD: met super kind professors from undergrad to grad and love their devotions, aptitude and works, always got encouragement from them to pursue the career, personal traits and life circumstances also play some strong roles. Concerns you have about your profile: 1. weak GRE's verbal score. I will retake the test this Sep but is it vitally necessary or should I invest time for SOPs? 2. LORs do not come from top professors in the field (they are from UK), but positive words are expected because I worked diligently with them and they actually encouraged me to take the academic career. Any additional specific questions you may have: should I play safe by applying to more schools in top 50-100 or 100-150? It will be harder to write a persuasive SOPs because few schools in these tiers are specialising in behavioral finance. Thank you again for having this extremely useful thread to help confused applicants! I really appreciate all your hard works. D.