<p>I am very interested in either MBA or PhD/DBA in Business (Strategy, OB, or Marketing). The thing is, I was preparing for applying to a PhD in Poli Sci in college and haven`t taken any math. I have taken linear algebra at a community college between junior and senior year of high school and calc and prob and statistics back in the senior year in high school (IB program). First semester micro and macro econ in college. Grades for all these were actually very good, but my GREs are 800 V / 730 Q. GPA 3.86 (from a uni where every class grade is between 0.0 and 4.0)
I am interested in fields that are not quant-heavy (Strategy, OB, or Marketing) and my credentials besides quant are solid.
With my deficiency in quant, do you I have a chance in top PhDs/DBAs in these fields, or should I opt for trying to go for MBA?
Are there top doctorate programs (or fields) where this will matter less? I know Harvard MBA is not so quant-heavy. How about their DBA/PhD? I asked them about applying with weaker quant, but they gave me the standard we look at all aspects of the application BS.
Last year I applied to Stanford PhD in OB, and a committee member me told me that I almost got in. When I asked for app feedback, they didn`t say anything about quant--only biz background. Was this a fluke or is lack of extensive quant background not a big deal for some biz fields?</p>
<p>Those statements gives me great pause, for the blunt truth is that nobody should be interested in either an MBA or a PhD/DBA in business. Those degrees serve entirely different goals. An MBA is useful for the general practice of business, and is therefore suited for probably over 99% of all who are interested in business at a higher educational standpoint. The PhD/DBA in business, on the other hand, is a highly specialized degree that really should be pursued only by those who are seriously considering a career in academia, usually within a business school, and frankly, the degree is not particularly useful for anything other than that. Believe me, apart from the special exception of finance, nobody in the real business world cares about theory, yet that’s all you will be spending your time consuming and generating as an academic. </p>
<p>Note, it may be acceptable for your career desires shift away from academia while within a PhD program. But if you already have no desire to become an academic right from the very beginning, don’t do it. Trust me, it’s not worth it. It’s too hard. You probably won’t even pass your qualification exams. The first year of a business year PhD has been described by most students - and justifiably so - as the worst year they’ve ever had in their lives. It’s not worthwhile to subject yourself to that torture if you’re not seriously considering an academic career. Just take the MBA instead, which many people have described as the best 2 years of their lives. </p>
<p>Having said that, I’ll will answer your other concerns. However, you should pay serious heed as to exactly why you think a business PhD and an academic career is right for you. </p>
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<p>My first response is that you should then probably strike Strategy from your potential interests immediately, as the clear direction that the strategy field is taking is towards becoming a sub-branch of economics, with all of the deep technical rigor that that implies. There’s almost no room left for the purely qualitative strategy researcher these days. </p>
<p>More importantly, the entire realm of business academia is becoming monotonically quantitative, particularly with statistical and analytical modeling. Even a purportedly and formerly highly qualitative OB-style journal such as ASQ has become increasingly quantitative; every single article in the latest issue involves quant models, whether empirical or theoretical. </p>
<p>The corollary is that even if you could find a doctoral program that would allow you to perform qualitative research, the real question is then, after you graduate, where exactly would you place? Such is the trend in academia that only a handful of respectable departments in the world remain who are willing to hire new faculty who are not deeply familiar with quantitative methods. </p>
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<p>Probably the least quantitative of any of the business academic fields these days is behavioral marketing (as opposed to quant marketing, which is obviously deeply technical in nature) or, its more theoretical cousin, organizational/social psychology. However, if that’s the path you wish to take, you have to be extremely comfortable with organizing and running long series of experiments, because that’s how you obtain data in those fields.</p>