LateOrNever

It could also just be that there is an apparent gulf between what my professor thought my qualifications are and what the adcoms think, as most of the schools she urged me to apply to rejected me outright without an interview! So maybe she told me not to bother applying because she thought I'd be a shoo-in at a top 5, and has since been proven wrong haha. (Yes, yes, rejections aren't necessarily due to lack of qualifications, admissions are an idiosyncratic black box, etc etc.) But to return to the point of the thread, I don't really know that it's even that useful an exercise to rank programs, as the difference between top 10 and top 20 seems to be dwarfed by your individual ability, ability to publish in "A journals", presentation skills, etc.

I'm curious how one would separate quality of students from the value-add from a particular program when looking at placements. The number of quant students to look at at each school can be quite small... My own subjective ranking is similar to the OP (but with "UCLA?" replacing "Duke?") but is based primarily on gut feeling rather than any good or useful metric. (And the poor proxy of econ rankings, since I'd be taking a lot of econ classes as a quant student. Which I irrationally value even while knowing rationally that it is a poor proxy.) One of the marketing faculty I spoke to advised me to not bother applying to CMU whereas mkboy (& their advisor) has it above Harvard. I feel like many subjective rankings could be colored by some weird unrepresentative data point despite our best efforts to be scientific in our judgments!

RIP Stanford, RIP Yale (Marketing) If nothing else once I hear back from Booth I can stop checking grad cafe

Those are the exact three programs I'm waiting to hear from so I hope you're right... On the other hand, a wise regulating body once told me, "past performance is no guarantee of future results." My alternate hypothesis is that quant applicants are worse at using grad cafe, e.g. I totally forgot to put my interview invite for Kellogg up a month ago and just remembered now.

I saw in a previous year a quant marketing applicant got admitted without interviewing, so you never know... I haven't heard anything regarding my (quant) application either though

A problem I was never previously optimistic enough to consider is that if I get multiple offers I don't know if I'll have enough PTO to cover the visit days...

I check this thread so often at work it's become my number one shortcut on chrome (the second and third are both grad cafe), so I figured I should say hi and vocally commiserate instead of silently. Really hoping to get some more solid news in the next week or so, if only to help me stop compulsively checking grad cafe. I had an interview at Kellogg Marketing (quant) a couple weeks back. I don't feel that I did a very good job though, especially since I usually think of myself as being good at interviewing. Hopefully they were more generous in their appraisal.

Ha if I get in anywhere I'll let you know... For various reasons I've decided to only apply to a handful of places this year, and will apply more widely next. So there's a decent chance I'll end up with all rejections.

Thanks for your very thorough response! That particular piece of advice (that I ought to only apply to the very best program) always struck me as strange -- especially since the idea of "top programs ten" is kind of a meaningless phrase since the programs are so idiosyncratic as you mentioned. I wonder if maybe I'd just misunderstood what she'd meant -- since it seemed to me that if (e.g.) I looked at some list of top 10-15 programs and narrowed it down to 5 where there were faculty doing things related to what I was interested in, then the most likely result seemed like it would be simply not getting into any program. Based on your response, I'll probably plan to apply more widely and disregard what my professor had said. From what I can gather, since there aren't any hard and fast guidelines for what programs I should consider to have a good shot at being admitted to, I should just cast a wide net and hope for the best. (If I'm being honest I made this post partly to see if anyone would comment to say that top programs were outside of my reach entirely; just want to clear up that I'm not so clueless or arrogant to think that I'm definitely going to be admitted to a top 10 or even 30 program.)

Hi there, thanks in advance for your time and help. GRE: 167 Q/170 V/5.5 AW Undergrad: Overall GPA 3.71/4, major in Economics and minor in CS from a top 5 (probably) US university. More in-depth details: generally mediocre grades for the first two years, better grades the last two years when I realized I wanted to do a PhD. Econ grades: Intro/Interm. Micro (B+/B+), Intro/Interm. Macro (B+/A), Econometrics I/II (A, B+), Applied Econometrics (A-), Electives in Behavioral/Experimental econ (A,A). Math grades: Calculus III (B), Multivariate Calculus (course title something like "Math for Economics") (B-), Intro to Real Analysis (A), Real Analysis I and II (A/A), Linear Algebra/Abstract Linear (A/A-). Computer science: Three course intro sequence (B+/B+/B+), Machine Learning (A), Data Viz (A), Discrete Math (A-), Theory of Algorithms (A) Grad: N/A Research: RA for a labor economist and for an Associate Prof of Marketing at top 10 (probably?) marketing program. Both for one year before graduating. Marketing prof said I was the best RA she'd had thus far. Industry: Currently working in the research department of an asset manager. Essentially I do more or less the same things as when I was an academic RA, and I work for folks with PhDs from places like Princeton, Cal Tech, Chicago Booth. I will not be using any industry letters for applications, however. Applying to: quant marketing. Number of places applying to: Maybe 7-8? Applying to quant marketing and econ as well, aiming for roughly 15 total applications. Dream schools: Chicago Booth, Stanford, similar schools. I'm currently having a very hard time figuring out what is required to be competitive at top programs. I'm concerned that my grades are a bit spotty, and want to keep my expectations realistic. The marketing professor I worked for told me I should focus on top schools, but I think it was more "I think that you'd be better served going to a lower ranked economics program rather than a lower ranked marketing program" and less "I think you're a sure shot for a top ten marketing program." Any opinions regarding that point are welcome as well. Finally, where can I get an idea of what the top programs are? Are the UT Dallas rankings accurate? My noisy proxy thus far has been going to schools that I would expect to be good and seeing which schools are represented at their marketing workshops.

Hi, First-time poster here -- sorry in advance if I'm lacking in proper etiquette. I decided pretty late in my college career that I wanted to do a PhD, and my profile reflects that. At this point though, I'm just wondering what can be considered realistic goals (PhD programs in the top 20? 50?), and what next steps should be (apply for PhDs, or apply for full-time RA jobs, or else for masters programs in Europe or something). Here's my profile: School: Top 10 US (overall and econ) Major: Econ, comp-sci minor GPA: 3.70 Math courses: Calc 3 (B), Multivariable Calc (B-), Linear Algebra (A), Abstract Linear Algebra (A-), Introduction to Analysis (A), Real Analysis I and II (A), Discrete Math (A-) Econ Courses: Intro Micro (B+), Intro Macro (B+), Intermediate Micro (B+), Intermediate Macro (A), Econometrics I (A), Econometrics II (B+), Applied Econometrics (A-), two Behavioral Econ/Public Policy-related electives (A). A bunch of CS courses too, but it's the same general trend; lots of B+'s in the intro sequences and A/A-'s in the upper-level electives once I got my act together. No grad courses. Research Experience: Two part-time RA jobs, one for a marketing professor at the business school and the other for a PhD researcher in the economics department. I've been at both jobs since September. No undergrad thesis. GRE/SOP not done yet. LORs: 1 from each of the aforementioned RA jobs, both of which are under faculty at my prestigious uni who I think are not too well known. The last from a lecturer who has been with the university for a long time, whose class I took and excelled in. Comments: I've lurked around a bit, and I know this isn't the strongest profile. I mostly want to know what I can realistically expect. Are there chances I could be admitted to a 20-30 program? A 10-20? Since I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to do, I have already accepted a position in the research division of a finance company (working on white papers and the like under PhDs). I wasn't originally planning on applying until Fall 2019, but I'm now wondering if I shouldn't just apply Fall 2018. Would I be better served trying to make up for a weaker transcript with a masters program, applying to a full-time RA position starting in 2019 to get better LORs, or just applying for PhDs right away? I'm considering both Econ PhD programs and Public Policy PhD programs, but the general impression I've gotten is that an Econ program is the more pragmatic choice since it would leave me with more options at the end. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.