BrazilianPhD

You probably have more than enough courses for the application, assuming you got good grades. I doubt they will really take such a detailed look at your coursework, a few more courses shouldn't make a difference. Now, it's nearly impossible to know what is going to be necessary or not. It depends a lot on your research and your advisor. A PhD is very narrow, it's not about knowing a wide range of things. Probably you won't really use 90% of the things you listed. I suggest thinking about the other parts of your application, like research experience and networking with professors to have many professors willing to write you a strong letter of recommendation. And maybe learning a little about marketing, especially the research related to your quantitative marketing interests.

Did you check the job placement of each program? I saw people from Erasmus, HEC Paris and Bocconi getting jobs in academia, so it's certainly a possibility for all of them. But, since you applied to those programs, you probably should have more information about them than I do. See what program has a job placement that is closer to your goal, and don't forget about other criteria like the advisor.

Your profile seems very good. I think the main challenge you will have is to convince people that you're really a match for CB. After all, a lot of things in your profile seem to scream Quant (Econ, Q170, R). So, be careful about that, you probably need to emphasize the parts that are more closely related to CB. The research experience and the letters of recommendation can play a big role. If CB professors with a good reputation say you're a great applicant for CB, that should carry a lot of weight. More psych courses are good, as it helps to communicate your positioning as a CB applicant.

1) Very hard to know without knowing your research interests. And probably only those who are close to your interests can really provide a good answer. My recommendation is to check papers related to your research interests, to see what type of math seems to be involved. 2) A specific research question is too narrow, in my opinion. I think more in terms of concepts, methods, theories. Something that you can build a career upon, a series of papers, something you want to be an expert. You won't be an expert on a specific research question, you need more than that. But you also can't be an expert on the whole area of quant marketing or the whole area of ML, for example, as that would be too much. After that, you can provide some more specific examples, like research questions that you would like to address. For example, I think I basically said that virtually anything related to the marketing-finance interface would interest me. During my master's, I researched how handling customer complaints affects firm profitability, for example. I did provide some examples like that, but I don't remember exactly what I said. 3) I don't know how much things have changed since I applied. The pandemic had an impact, which was different for different universities. When I applied, more than 5 years ago, the average number seemed to be around 15. I applied to 20, but that was higher than usual. After the pandemic, I saw people applying to 25 schools, but I think it's too much.

I'm not in that field, but the ranking we use the most for business PhDs is the UTD: https://jsom.utdallas.edu/the-utd-top-100-business-school-research-rankings/ You can select the journals that are related to your field and then get the rank for those journals. Maybe there is some other ranking more specific to your field, I don't know. But finding the right schools is usually hard work indeed. And many times it's not about finding the right program, but the right advisor. A good program can have some terrible advisors. And some top researchers can work for lesser known universities where they can have more power, influence, and freedom. It took me months to get my list of schools to apply.

I don't see anything that makes me think that top 20 is a good idea. Top 20 is exceptionally competitive, we don't recommend focusing on top 20 even for people with a much stronger profile than yours. Also, this looks like the profile of someone applying for something in industry, not for a PhD. There are too many things that usually are not very relevant for PhDs, like being a marketing & sales manager, unicorns, or being part of sports teams. This is interesting for MBA applications, for example, not PhD. A PhD is often very narrow, so just stating broad interest areas doesn't really add much. You mentioned research, but without many details. I don't even know if this is academic research, or the type of research people do in corporations. If this is academic research, we certainly would expect to see much more details, like conference presentations, papers published, something like that. For Quant Marketing, probably people want to know how good you are at coding, which statistical software you use, and whether you have a strong background in mathematics, statistics, machine learning, that kind of thing. You also didn't mention the strength of your letters of recommendation, another thing that can make a difference. Nobody can really make a list of school to apply, as that is usually very specific for the profile of each applicant. But you really need to better define your research interests in order to look for the right schools for you. Sometimes, the right school can be very unrelated to rank, for example. But research fit is the #1 factor to choose a university, and it's impossible to know the fit based on the broad interests you listed. Right now, I'd say that you are far from ready to apply for a PhD. The general feeling is that you still have the mindset of someone from industry and MBA, and then that you don't really understand what you're getting into. And, given your career in industry, many schools may believe it's better for you to stay in industry instead of switching to academia. You need to think of a convincing answer to explain why you would give up on the type of career you have been following.

I think it's good enough for acceptance. But of course there is no guarantee. You being waitlisted shows your profile is good. 2020 was a bad year, lots of universities were forced to change plans, freeze hiring, etc., due to the pandemic. Even those who could get new people often decided to wait to be sure about the future, or reduce the number of students accepted. I didn't email any professor, and I remember some schools explicitly advising against that. It is a must in other fields, but not in marketing. This doesn't seem to be strong enough. You tell yo don't want advertising, but you don't tell what topic you want and why. You mentioned applying to Marketing Strategy, but at least when I applied a lot of schools made me choose between Quant and CB even though I'm mainly a Marketing Strategy guy. So, I think you need to better position yourself because it's not clear what is your approach here. I don't know what you mean by theoretical, but usually marketing strategy is considered the least theoretical among the research tracks for marketing. So, saying that makes me think marketing strategy can be a bad match for your goals. No. My undergrad GPA was crap, for example. Because my university's grading system is very harsh. Nobody seemed to care. No. In marketing, I'd say it's rare to have someone with a publication. And, if they have a publication, it's probably a low level journal. So, it's nice if you have a publication, but it's far from being a deal breaker. I don't think it's worth it. It can show you persisted, just like it can show that you were widely rejected before. And I don't think this actually proves you're in this for long haul. It may be some evidence, but a much better evidence is a well-known professor saying that in the LoR. By the way, we don't check the posts here often anymore since there is barely anything new. It may be better to send a direct message to some users in the field that helped people in the past, telling them about a post about a profile evaluation.

It's not really my thing, but both alternatives are possible. I'd say that lab experiments are the standard, but you're more and more expected to be able to do field experiments too. CB research typically includes multiple studies, so doing a mix of lab experiments and field experiments can benefit you, make your paper stronger. I'd recommend reading recent papers from journals like JCR to see how people conduct experiments.

Sure. For example, this journal is more behavioral, including theoretical papers and papers based on experiments (which tend to me much easier on the math side, although not on the theoretical side). However, I think having strong math skills is expected for accounting PhDs regardless of the area. I know an accounting PhD student here who was forced to leave the program because they were not able to handle the coursework related to math.

Hi Tod. That's great, congratulations! Let me know if I can be of further help down the road. Right now, it's time to celebrate.

Quant/Strategy, not CB. Not R1, but I was really focusing more on a balanced school. I have a lot of work experience and teaching experience (and I don't want to waste or stop doing that), so many R1 universities are not really a great match for me. And the university is also a great match on a more personal side, my own personal interests and goals for life. Like you said, the important thing is to do something that makes us happy. Maybe I could get into an R1 if I waited another year, but it didn't make sense to me.

Congratulations! Just like you, I got help here from the beginning, and I accepted a job offer recently. It's great to see other people in this hard but very special journey.

I don't think there should be another platform. Either you are missing something or they really messed up. By the way, I guess you meant University of North Texas, right? Don't get the university name wrong in your application.

Well, the strategy you mentioned now sounds a lot closer to my own strategy: "developing my own ideas and conducting my own research" and "come up with relevant research ideas to show that I can also think like a researcher." If you think like a researcher, you should be able to talk in terms of research questions, like I recommended. If you think like a researcher, you should pay attention to laboratories and things that matter to get research done, like I recommended. If you think like a researcher, you don't speak in generic terms, you are very precise about what you want to accomplish. The only thing is that, if you have relevant research ideas, but the school can't help you with those ideas (because they don't have a good advisor, the right resources, etc.), then your ideas are still useless for the school. You can think like a researcher, but that doesn't mean you are the researcher that the school wants. My overall approach is based on being good match. So, I try to explain what is my purpose (in research, career, life, etc.) and why the school is a great fit for my purpose. Anything the helps to show we're a good match for each other. So, I don't know enough about you to give you a specific answer. But, if I didn't have industry experience, I would use any kind of experience or knowledge that can help to show a good match. Even with industry experience, I use anything that can help to show a good match. Regardless of having industry experience or not, we make decisions all the time. We see people making decisions all the time. We are discussing how to decide a strategy for application right now. So, no industry experience doesn't mean no exposure to the challenges of decision-making. Regardless of having industry experience or not, we are consumers and were are exposed to marketing actions all the time. It's impossible to be really unaware of marketing. Most PhDs don't have industry experience, and they are still getting new ideas all the time. They are still able to see the problems, and be motivated to solve them. Having no industry experience is no excuse to not have a clear purpose. Especially for CB, the problems of the real world are not typically the concern. CB researchers are very theoretical, a lot of what they do is based on gaps in the literature, not problems faced by professionals in industry. Things are changing, CB is becoming more worried about industry, but it still the research track in marketing that is most distant from industry. If you were really focused on industry experience or problems of the real world in marketing, I would not recommend CB. Let me try to give you even another example of the things I might do in your place. Maybe I saw Wikipedia constantly begging for donations, and then I became curious about the customer behavior when customers see something like that. How do they decide if they would donate or not? If they decide to donate, how do they decide the amount? What is the psychological phenomenon that drives people to donate to Wikipedia? Do they do that because they are thankful for all the help Wikipedia provided? Do they do that because they are afraid of losing Wikipedia? Do they do that to have a feeling that they are doing something good? What experiments I could run to investigate that? What scales would I use? How would I control for all the alternative explanations? I'm sure I could get several research proposals just based on something small like this. No industry experience necessary for that, and I'm not even a CB person. Then, I could explain my motivation to research something like that, as someone who grew up poor in a third world country, living in a small city that didn't even have a library. So, I would have a personal motivation to help organizations like Wikipedia. And then maybe the professor is an expert on donations. And maybe the university has a laboratory where I can create simulated versions of Wikipedia, manipulating how Wikipedia asks for donations. And maybe the university is where one of the founders of Wikipedia was a PhD student. And maybe the university is located in a city with a strong community of Brazilians like me. And maybe the history of job placement looks perfect for someone like me, who is more into a balanced type of school instead of R1 universities. So on and so forth. Like I said, anything that helps to show I'm a good fit. I keep piling them up. It can be related to work experience, research experience, personal experience. It can be something I read. It can be something that happened with someone I know. It can be a hobby. This is just a quick example that I created since your research interests and methodologies are so different from mine. But it should give you an idea about how I market myself. And in my opinion it is much more convincing than saying you want to do research, even though that's not my type of thing. You should be able to come up with something much better. I'm now in my last year, and I followed the same strategy while applying for jobs. I got a job at a university, and a brief experience I had in another field 20 years ago was much more critical to get a job than my industry experience in marketing. We are marketers. We are expected to know about this. How to sell an idea? What are the needs and wants of our customers? How do schools make a decision? What's my segmentation strategy? How am I positioning myself to have a competitive advantage, and stay ahead of other applicants? For example, when you say you are young. Is that what schools want? Is that going to give you a competitive advantage? If not, that's not a good selling point for your application. I know I'm repeating myself over and over again at this point, but it's all about giving the schools convincing reasons to why they should accept you, and not one of the other hundred applicants they have in line. As long as your strategy leads to that, I think it's great.

In that case, I would go back to the big picture. In the end, schools are asking the question: "why should I extend an offer to you instead of another applicant?" Research fit tends to be a big part of that. Wanting to do research is a given, nobody should apply to do a PhD if they don't want to do research. If you say you don't know about marketing and the world because you're young, schools probably will conclude that you're then too young to do a PhD because you don't know yet what you want to do. They may conclude you're not ready for a PhD, even if you love research. Be careful about that. If you don't know now, it's not easy to believe that you will know after you get accepted. It's not like the school can make you turn 30 years old and make you understand marketing like magic. My coursework barely included marketing, I can't say the program taught me much about marketing. If you get accepted and the professor asks you to present a list of research proposals, what are you going to do if you don't even know your research interests? A PhD is not like undergrad or masters, where professors tell you what to do. My advisor approved and advised me on my research proposals, but I had to think of them first. I had to make a list with many research proposals, he shot down most of them, and then I worked on the proposals that survived. So, with your answer, you're giving reasons for the school to not accept you. Because you're almost saying you're not ready for it because you're too young. Then you need to find something else that would be compelling argument in your favor, and not against you. If you haven't done so yet, I recommend talking to the professors who are going to write your recommendations, to develop an application strategy. Find a good answer to give when schools ask "why should we accept you and not someone else?" You want to do research, but that's also the case for the other applicants, so that can't be the answer.

I think it's a balance. Too generic is bad, but too specific is also bad. Remember, you should be able to provide convincing reasons that explain your motivation behind a research interest. Why exactly that research interest fits your purpose? Usually, it's already hard to do that with a few research interests, so it would be much harder to do for 12 of them. That also applies to that idea of expanding the findings of professors. It helps to show that you checked their work, but that by itself doesn't show you are motivated to do that. Also, discussing the professors' research puts you on disadvantage because certainly the professors know much more about their research than you do. If your alternative explanations don't make sense or the professors don't like them, you can get into a big discussion that you probably have no chance of winning. I was prepared to talk about that during the interview, for example, but I didn't use that in my applications. At least for me, my motivation and my purpose were not driven by my advisor's research. Sure, I saw some ways that I could expand on the research he does, but that doesn't explain my motivation to do research. I can do that even for papers that I have absolutely no interest. About data and laboratories, imagine that having a laboratory like this would be exactly what you need to do the research of your dreams: https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/departments/marketing/research/labs/customer-interface-lab.html If your research needs a laboratory like this, and the university has a laboratory like this, then it's only natural to conclude that you may be a good match for the university. And that's quite specific, it's not every university that has this kind of laboratory.

I think it's a balance. Too generic is bad, but too specific is also bad. Remember, you should be able to provide convincing reasons that explain your motivation behind a research interest. Why exactly that research interest fits your purpose? Usually, it's already hard to do that with a few research interests, so it would be much harder to do for 12 of them. That also applies to that idea of expanding the findings of professors. It helps to show that you checked their work, but that by itself doesn't show you are motivated to do that. Also, discussing the professors' research puts you on disadvantage because certainly the professors know much more about their research than you do. If your alternative explanations don't make sense or the professors don't like them, you can get into a big discussion that you probably have no chance of winning. I was prepared to talk about that during the interview, for example, but I didn't use that in my applications. At least for me, my motivation and my purpose were not driven by my advisor's research. Sure, I saw some ways that I could expand on the research he does, but that doesn't explain my motivation to do research. I can do that even for papers that I have absolutely no interest. About data and laboratories, imagine that having a laboratory like this would be exactly what you need to do the research of your dreams: https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/departments/marketing/research/labs/customer-interface-lab.html If your research needs a laboratory like this, and the university has a laboratory like this, then it's only natural to conclude that you may be a good match for the university. And that's quite specific, it's not every university that has this kind of laboratory.

About the research interests and goals, certainly it's very hard to know how specific they should be. Sometimes you need to be vague because not many schools research what you want to study. For example, there was one applicant here whose interest was sports marketing. That's vague, but narrowing it down doesn't make much sense because experts on sports marketing are already rare. Saying "sports marketing" is probably enough to show a good match for a program that researches sports marketing, as there aren't many around. But that's not the case for something like decision-making, when virtually every CB program does research about that. If any program looks good, then no program looks the best. It becomes very hard for the school to evaluate if its program is the best for you or other program would be better. My personal preference is to show the research interests using some examples of research questions that you would like to address. It's much easier to understand what are the research interests when we see the questions, and it also shows that you think and communicate as a researcher. Research topics are rarely interesting by themselves. But good research questions can pique the interest of professors, especially when you really have a good match. They would be curious to know more about your ideas. For example, saying your interest is "prosocial behavior and decision making" sounds vague and not so interesting to me. But if you tell me that you want to study "how exposure to stressful experiences affects people's willingness to donate money to charity", then I'm much more curious to know about what you have in mind. In this example, manipulating stress during experiments can be a challenge because of ethical concerns, and I would want to see what's your proposed solution for that. Thus, I would be more tempted to interview you so we could discuss your ideas. But that's my own way of thinking, certainly that's not the only way to show your research interests. About matching with a school, I believe there are several elements. Research topic is certainly one, and probably the most important. But I don't think that's the only one. A few others that come to my mind are research methodology (e.g., a program which uses biological data and experiments to understand CB), access to data or laboratories (this was a big part of my PhD interview), partnerships with industry (maybe less relevant for CB), culture of the university and department (e.g., competitive or collaborative environment), job placement (you want programs that will lead to the job opportunities that you want), city (some people have a hard time living in a city they don't like because the city is too cold/hot, too small/big, etc.), personality and style of the potential advisor (e.g., very hands-on or hands-off), faculty's networking (sometimes you are also interested in their connections). And sometimes a good match is not doing the same thing, but complementary things. For example, maybe the program is not a good match for the topic. But maybe you are already good enough regarding that, and so you are actually searching for someone who can help you with the methodology, not the topic. Then, you contribute with your expertise about the topic, and the program contributes with its expertise about the methodology. It can still be a good match.

Top 20 are always very hard to tell. Extremely competitive, but also sometimes the schools are willing to take the risk. I don't recommend targeting only top 20 even if your profile looks perfect. A score of 700 probably isn't impressive even for top 50. Schools should get several applications with scores higher than that, so it certainly can be a deal breaker. You will be compared to other applicants after all. That being said, if that score of 700 includes a perfect quant score, then it's less of an issue because the quantitative score is the main concern for accounting. There is often a big difference between the minimum to be considered and what it takes to be accepted. The goal is usually to stand out among a very strong set of applicants, and not to meet minimum requirements.

Not many people left here, and it may take some time until any of us check how things are going here. You GMAT is not very high, but it's not low. It should be enough for many programs, and then they will worry about the other parts of your application. I'm in Marketing, but not CB so it's a little harder for me to judge your profile. But I think it looks quite strong. Of course if you target the top of the top, it's always hard to tell no matter how strong you are. As people here often say, top 20 are a crapshoot. But if you target a more reasonable range (e.g., top 50), I think your chances are very good. Selecting the right schools that are a good match for you will make a big difference. And your research interests and goals seem to be still vague and all over the place. Like, "people's behaviors, especially the decision-making process" probably describes almost the whole field of CB and almost every CB applicant. It's not something that will show a good match or give you a competitive advantage. As you said, "there are so many nuances that can make a difference on the final decision." So, which nuances you're really motivated to study? Which nuances you can explain your motivation in a convincing way? And which schools have the experts, or the resources, or something else to research that nuance?

The 90th percentile rule has some flexibility, but that score seems barely enough even for lower ranked schools. It's certainly a weakness. Maybe they won't desk reject you because of that, some schools really take a comprehensive look. But with such a low score, you're telling the schools that you're willing to take the changes of being rejected. Either you're not good at taking tests, or you're not willing to build a stronger application for some reason.

I think you can submit both if you want to. At least I don't remember seeing anything against that when I applied. But I sent my GMAT only, I didn't send my GRE.

I'm 48, in the 5th year of a Marketing PhD. And I certainly know people older than me. I don't think that age itself is a problem. Maybe for some schools, but not in general. However, there are some other factors that are often related to age. For example, sometimes older people have a harder time getting strong letters of recommendation if they have been out of school for a long time. Or some relevant skills and knowledge may be rusty if they didn't use them for a long time (in my case, I hadn't used matrix calculations for decades so I struggled with that, for example). It's also good to remember that older people usually achieved higher positions during their careers, potentially with higher salary, status, etc. So, by doing a PhD, they would be giving up a lot, as they would spend years on a lower position with a low salary. On a personal side, older people also have more of a chance of being married and having kids, so the sacrifice the student is making could affect the whole family. Schools may be worried about the toll a PhD will take on an older student. The statement of purpose and the interview can be critical to convince schools that you are really committed and willing to make that sacrifice, that you know what you're doing. That can be very tricky, I saw some older applicants having a hard time convincing people that they really should do a PhD. For example, if you say that you had an amazing career in Corporate Strategy and think tanks, professors may think: well, then it's better for you to keep working in corporate strategy and think tanks instead of doing a PhD. On the other hand, if you say that your career wasn't that good, that you are not happy with your career, than schools may think that doing a PhD is just your way of escaping from that, that you want to do a PhD because you hate your career and not because you love academic research. Another example. Usually, applicants are expected to show they are passionate about research, or something like that. If you are young and already want to do a PhD, that helps to show your passion. But, if you are older and you say you are passionate about research, people will wonder: why did you wait so long then? So, again, I don't think discrimination is usually the problem with older applicants. But older applicants often have some issues with important parts of the application, like letters of recommendations, skills, and statement of purpose. I see many of them relying too much on work experience, something that is not so relevant for PhD applications. I also see some older applicants trying to sell the idea that what they did industry is similar to what they would do in academia, and that often makes me think they don't understand the differences between industry and academia, and they have no idea what they are getting into. Some applications I see look more like MBA applications than PhD applications. Now, of course being older also have positive aspects to it. If you solve issues like the ones I mentioned, and bring the positive side of your age into play, your application can really stand out for the right programs. For example, several people told me that my research questions are usually very interesting and relevant. With more experience, it's easier to have more questions and questions that are more relevant.

I don't know if there is difference specifically for Management/OB. But, at least at the business school where I'm doing a PhD, GMAT is the standard when they show us data regarding the new PhD students. But if your GRE is good, I don't think it's going to be a problem when the school accepts both. I saw a professor saying that she prefers the GMAT, but if she sees a GRE she just converts it. I took both the GRE and the GMAT, and used the GMAT because the result was better.

I'm in Quant Marketing/Strategy. 1 - What has been your timeline for narrowing down research questions? First, it's important to notice that I had a good idea about my research interests and who would be my advisor when I applied. It's not like that for all quant students, and that can really change things. For me, the timeline was a little like this: - First year was focused on coursework, with barely any research being involved. - Second year was still heavy on coursework, but I started doing research. The research question was mostly suggested by the advisor. This was the period when my strengths and weaknesses became more evident. So, we were better able to understand what kind of research I can do, and what kind of research is not for me (at least for now). This is very important because it's useless if you think of a research question that you are not able to study for some reason. - Third year is when things really happened. Now I had taken several courses, read a ton of papers, discussed a lot of ideas, knew my strengths and weaknesses, knew more about my advisor, knew the resources I had available, etc. So, I thought of lots of research questions, developing them into a simple proposal (like 1 page, with the question, method, data, some literature). Then we chose the ones to work on during the PhD. 2 - How do you balance your personal interests with popular/trending subjects? That's a very complex question to answer. It's hard to tell what to do without understanding what's behind the popularity of a topic. Why is something trending? Or why something you want to do is not trending? In my case, some of my main interests are not so popular anymore. And one of the main reasons is that a lot of work has been done in the past decade or so. In that case, it's a lot hard to make a contribution, the gaps that are left are probably very challenging to address. On the other hand, I can't do something just because it's popular. The research I do will influence my positioning as a researcher, influence the opportunities I'll have in the job market later, etc. If I do something that is not of my interest, that will make me go to places that are not of my interest too. Now, a research has many components. Not all of them need to be popular or trending. For example, maybe your research question is not something trendy, but you are using a trendy methodology to address that question. Or maybe you can frame your research question in a way to makes it closer to something trendy. 3 - Is the quality of a PhD program fit more related to the actual research subject matter or the methodology/approach to questions? It can be due to the subject, due to the methodology, or due to a combination of both. And it can be related to other things, like culture of the department and job placement. Again, this is something complex. For the quantitative people that are more theoretical, usually the methodology is extremely important. For example, there are people who focus on game theory approaches. As long as the program is good with game theory, it's good for the applicant. For those who are closer to strategy, usually the subject is more important. Professors can be experts on sales management, for example. Whether they will use a field experiment or machine learning is less relevant, they will choose the approach according to the research question. In the end, it depends on what you're looking for. Are you more interested in the subject or the methodology? Do you need more help with the subject or the methodology? If you are already an expert on the methodology, but know nothing about the subject, getting into a program that can't help you with the subject is a bad idea. In my case, we had a "deal" from the beginning: I would be responsible for the subject matter, and my advisor would help me with the methodology.