Search the Community

Test Scores (GMAT/GRE): Q160 78%, V161 88% (Yep, quant is low...) Undergrad GPA: 3.2 at a Harvard, Yale, Princeton. Liberal Arts major. (Didn't discover my love for finance until a few years after college so wasn't terribly motivated. Also played a varsity sport.) Graduate GPA: 3.75. Top 10 MBA with a Finance Concentration. Received award given to students with above 3.85 in Finance / Accounting courses. Finalist for the top finance student in graduating class (four finalists out of 300 students in the class). Research Experience: Limited but I did an Independent Study under the tutelage of a well-known professor my second-year of business school. He gave me the equivalent of an A and seemed to love the work I did. He's one of my LOR writers and is well-known in the field. Teaching Experience: None (unless you count being an officer in the Marines...?) Work Experience: Worked in Investment Banking at a bulge bracket bank for two years post-MBA. Did mostly M&A work -- lots of financial modeling, valuation, etc. Prior to my MBA, I was a Marine officer for four years. (My recommenders seem to think the military experience will help me stand out -- I'm not sure as I'm still concerned about the GRE score) Concentration Applying to: Finance Number of programs planned to apply to: Atleast 10 Dream Schools: I don't think I have a shot at a top 10 with my current GRE score -- but NYU or Columbia if we're dreaming. Targeting Maryland, George Washington, George Mason, Arizona State, University of California-Irvine. Really just wondering what's realistic for me and where I should be aiming. Other Questions: Don't have a lot of higher level math courses or any programming experience -- I have nine months of free time until I start a program so I can spend as much time as needed building a strong foundation here. I've started taking MIT's math curriculum on OpenCourseWare (starting with single variable calc and working my way up to applied math). Is this the best use of my time to 1) show I'm dedicated to improving this part of my profile and 2) prepare myself for the quant-heavy courses at the PhD level? Anything else I should be doing in the meantime? What made you want to pursue a PhD? Absolutely loved my finance courses / professors in business school and want to dive deeper / learn more. It was the first time I ever really felt incredibly motivated academically. Couldn't stand the life of a banker and missed the opportunity to do research behind theories on asset pricing / valuation / etc. Questions or concerns you have about your profile? My main concern is obviously my Quant GRE. I see a lot of programs with a "minimum" of 160 and I'm right there. My recommenders -- all highly-regarded, well-published finance professors at my T10 MBA program -- all seem to think it shouldn't be an issue given my strong academic performance in business school (which they say they will attest to in their LORs) and the "uniqueness" of my military background. I'm not so sure, so I'm interested to hear others' experience with Finance PhDs and low quant scores. Also lacking a lot of high-level math courses and looking for ways to pro-actively address that over the next few months and convey that in my application Any additional specific questions you may have: What range of schools (T20, T30, etc) should I target? (Assuming I don't retake the GRE)