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I'm an Indian and currently pursuing MBA. I'm interested in doing Ph.D. in the area of finance and is expected to apply this year. I have done my engineering in the area of IT. By the time I will send my application I will have almost two years of RA Experience, at least one conference presentation, one published paper in a peer-reviewed international journal (Second Author). I'm also expecting a GRE score of 330+. The thing that I'm worried about is my not so good academics. I was in top 30% of the batch by the end of the first year MBA and my Graduation GPA is 8/10. I'm also thinking of writing CFA Level 1, but I will only be able to give exam in December and results will come by the end of January. My not so good academics is bothering me a lot. I have seen the profile of students in the top 25 programs and generally found people with very good academics. There is no way for me to retake courses and improve acads. I would be very thankful if one can give suggestions on improving my profile and how to deal with acad problem??

I've been working for about 4 years in the financial industry (mainly in quant/quant programming jobs) and now I want to pursue a PhD in Economics :eager: Two of my LOR recommendation will be written by professors working for a German university. I studied and did research with the two of them. One of them was my thesis advisor and we have published together. I would like my third LOR to be written by one of the guys I worked and researched with. He is the CIO of a relatively known Swiss hedge fund. We worked together (for about 4-5 months) in research ideas that I implemented for him, but nothing was published. Is this a yay or a nay? My reasoning is that the point of view of a practitioner might be interesting for the selection committee but a potential drawback is that my ex-boss from the hedge fund has no graduate studies (i.e. only his track record with the company and his working experience supports his word/experience with me). Another option is my current boss. He has done tons of research and is willing to give a LOR, but I have not done any research with him. We have a normal working relationship. What should I do? Should I include recommendation letters from work or should I go for LOR from academics only? Thanks in advance