Management PhD/DBA Admission Help

Graduate School
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<p>Hi, I'm hoping for some feedback from people who have either applied to or researched top tier PhD/DBA programs in Management (Strategy, Marketing, Finance, etc.) in terms of how I would stack up and what might help/hurt the application process. So, here's my background:</p>

<p>Undergrad: This is the major issue, as I was one of those people who should have had a 3.7-4.0 but wasn't all that interested and managed to ace tests and blow off classes and homework to average out to a 2.6. So, not the highest grades on maturity at that point, but I was working about 50 hours a week and taking a full time load, so I wasn't totally goofing off. I went to Bentley University and majored in Marketing. </p>

<p>MBA: I went to Babson and did the one year accelerated program, was consulting on the side, took the toughest classes they offered like econometrics based strategy, advanced data analytics, economic and financial forecasting, etc. and managed to pull out a 3.51.</p>

<p>My GMAT is a 750. I didn't really have much time to prep for it, only about a week and a half, so I suppose I could take some time and try to improve on this if it would help. </p>

<p>I do have about 10 years of business experience, including market research and analytics, and business strategy consulting (including pricing strategy) over the past 5 years. So, things like econometric modeling, investment analysis, statistical modeling, etc., and their applications are second nature at this point, and I'm hoping that this would help demonstrate my capabilities and seriousness relative to the field of management. </p>

<p>So, I'm wondering how that would stack up. The biggest concern is the undergrad gpa, but secondarily, my background is that of a practitioner rather than a pure researcher. I also plan to do a combination of teaching and practice work after receiving the degree. </p>

<p>One final piece to consider. I have also been admitted to the MSc in Quantitative Finance with the University of London External Programme. It's a correspondence degree, and unlike most useless online degrees, is very rigorous and requires submission of written exams at standard test sites. I could just buckle down over the next couple of years and go for a First Class Honour with this degree if the application without it would fall short and apply in a couple of years. </p>

<p>Anyway, I'd appreciate any objective feedback. Thanks.</p>

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<p>You may want to ask this at the MBA forum as well. Click on “Discussion Home” in the upper left of this screen and then scroll down. The folks there may have more detailed advice for you.</p>

<p>I’ve done an online degree myself, and it is a very challenging way to learn things. You will need tremendous self-discipline to get the work done in a timely fashion, and a tolerance for drinking coffee and whining about the subject/project/textbook/professor either to yourself or by email to a colleague half the world away.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best!</p>

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<p>Checkout econphd.com. There are links to PhD in business forums that can help you out.</p>

<p>You might need more math than you did in undergrad. PhD in business requires a fair amount of upper level math.</p>

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<p>That depends on the program and your research interest. Many graduating business PhD/DBA’s have relatively little math background. Generally speaking, only those who are going to use heavy analytical models, such as business economists or operations researchers really need heavy duty math.</p>

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<p>Definitely go to the Test Magic forums. They have an excellent community, and also records of successful applicants there.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the feedback, folks. It’s surprising how little good data there is about these programs relative to admissions. My undergrad math included two statistics classes, two calculus, discrete probability, and microeconomics. Grad school also included statistics, microeconomics, econometrics, economic and financial forecasting, and data mining and modeling.</p>

<p>Would that be considered insufficient?</p>

<p>Frankly, I’m not necessarily surprised, but am scratching my head when it comes to some of these requirements, and how little professional experience can be respected by these programs. In terms of mathematics, it takes a lot more intellectual horsepower to apply advanced concepts in economterics, statistics, and mathematics to real world business situations than it does to do theoretical calculations in an undergrad environment with perfect data sets. This is why many Phds in economics appear to be theoretical, foolish, and academic in real business strategy situations. They know all the models, math, and proper ways of doing everything, but don’t necessarily have the analytic agility to quickly synthesize, quantify, and assess… and, of course, there are those who do these things well too, and those are the stand outs. </p>

<p>But beyond crunching numbers in a theoretical environment, business, like medicine and law, requires experience, inferential capabilties, and intellect among other things. It’s not chemistry, where having a phd means that you’ll be a good chemistry teacher. Who the heck wants lean from or go to a doctor who has all the education and never practiced, or a lawyer that’s never praticed? Likewise, the concept that someone with 10 years of big time business experience and the intellectual capability would be a less qualified person to attend a management phd/dba program, and ultimately teach business, than some smart, hard working kid who went straight from undergrad to the doctorate, and started teaching business at the age of 27 or 28 with no experience, is ridiculous! Yet, it seems as though that kind of background is considered more favorable, especially if there is evidence of research. </p>

<p>Logically, it makes little sense, but I’ll get off my soap box :). Anyway, thanks again for the feedback.</p>

<p>In the meantime, I contacted BU and they provided the name of a student to speak with. I will also be attending a Harvard information session in a couple of weeks. So, we shall see…</p>

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<p>Frankly, that’s more than what many current PhD/DBA students at top business programs that I know have. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, I would argue that it is still useful to have a background in Real Analysis, Calculus of Variations, and possibly Dynamic Programming. </p>

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<p>Yeah, well, what can I say? That’s what business academia wants. I don’t agree with it, but I didn’t make the rules. The sad fact is that you’re not going to be rewarded for practical knowledge. The rewards come from academic publications, which often times have no real-world applicability. </p>

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<p>Well, actually, it does make sense logically, at least from an internal standpoint. The fact is that MBA programs are by far the most lucrative of all of the programs within academia, and will surely remain so for the near future. As long as students desire MBA’s, which will be the case as long as the top employers continue to recruit out of MBA programs, then business schools have no reason to change. They can continue to publish research papers that practitioners never read, miseducate MBA students with professors who are unqualified to teach business and uninterested in doing so, run research programs that nobody really cares about, and promote professors to tenure for a body of research work that nobody will ever use, and it won’t matter. As long as the MBA programs continue to pay the piper, the piper will continue to play his song.</p>