Questions for PhD Quant Marketing Applications

[newuser145]

Hi everyone! I am hoping to pursue a PhD in Quant Marketing in the near future and plan to apply by the end of next year 🙂 I plan to do something mainly IO/econometrics/micro-theory related (my background is mainly in economics), but I am also keen to try to explore ML (although I haven't taken any courses on this yet). I was hoping to ask for some advice:

1.) Regarding math courses, so far I have Calc 1-3, Linear Algebra, Math Stats 1 and Real Analysis 1. I am leaning towards also taking Real Analysis 2 and 3 but then I am not sure what would be best for the two remaining courses I could still take before applying, my options are: math stats 2, probability, measure theory, functional analysis.

2.) How specific should my research interests be in the SOP? Should I mention a specific research question I want to answer or be a bit more general? I know I definitely need to get into the literature more (I just recently decided to focus on marketing and mainly was focused on econ in the past).

3.) What would you think is a good number of schools to apply for? 

Thank you so much everyone!

 

[BrazilianPhD]

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. 

[newuser145]

Thank you so much for your helpful response!!