PhD in OM from NYU Stern

shardgoozau

惊喜的发现浙大的校友

willowzju

Hi there~~

海马福雷德

赞！ NYC!!!

willowzju

赞！ NYC!!!

-- by 会员 海马福雷德 (2010/3/23 10:43:36)

Thanks! Congrats to your acceptance by CMU!

思慕少艾

大Cong楼主！！

boum

wow.惊现校友

dwijcheney

赞

boum

Thank you guys for the congrats! I would love to share my experiences for the good of the future applicants.

My undergrat major was EE (automation) in Zhejiang U (GPA 3.7+), and I got my master's degree in UPenn (GPA 4.0).  So  '曲线救国' sometimes works.

I have been doing research and my master thesis on transportation and math programming problems with both professors in Wharton and UPenn SEAS. I think the research experience helps a lot. Of course their letters help too.

By the way, from my own experience, don't take it too seriously if the department website says 'previous research experience is not necessary', or 'GRE score is not an important factor....'.  If you want to be accepted by those big names like Wharton, Stanford, Columbia biz school, etc, just try to be perfect in every aspect: GRE, research, reference letter, math ( math is for the OM/OR applicants, not sure whether it's needed in other fields..). It will only help, but not hurt your application.

If you want to be accepted by the top b-schools, I suggest you have your GRE verbal score higher than 600. My GRE verbal is 530, which could be an easy excuse for top biz school to reject me.

About math, if you are a math major student, then congratulations. You will have great advantage when applying for OM or OR. Especially in Cornell ORIE department, they love the students in math major, and you can see this from its professors' backgrounds. Two of my friends, whose majors are math, got accepted by Cornell with no doubt, and I got rejected by it with no doubt. So if you are NOT a math student, be careful when applying to Cornell ORIE.  (I wish I could know this earlier..)

As I have posted before, the good things about getting a master's degree in US are: 1) you can easily get high grades, because doing well in exams is not that difficult for Chinese students; 2) you can get reference letters from well-known professors; 3) you will have chances of on-site interviews, which is great advantage.

This is what I have come up with so far...

-- by 会员 willowzju (2010/3/23 9:59:01)

Many thanks for sharing your background, LZ.
Actually, I am senior student in ZJU and apply for PhD in Information Systems this year.
In my application, I find that one serious problem of students in ZJU is that they dare not to apply B-schools' PhD programs directly after undergraduate study. I think it is an illusion that b-school is much harder to get in. In fact, there're a lot of students in top universities of Mainland China try and succeed every year.
Another problem is that, undergraduate studnets in School of Management of ZJU don't know there're such a chance to apply PhD, instead they apply master degrees intensively every year. At the same time, excellent students from Engineering School (our university is extremely strong in engineering)  don't have an awareness of OM and IS programs (I think OM and IS programs welcome engineering students) in US b-schools. I think b-school is much better than engineering schools in terms of student placement. Engineering studens don't apply OM/IS (they keep applying CS, EE, and ME), missing good opportunities in b-schools.
What do you think of the abovementioned two problems among ZJU students? What can we do to change it? Again, congratulations to your application results!

andy40414344

big cons

willowzju

[/quote]Many thanks for sharing your background, LZ.
Actually, I am senior student in ZJU and apply for PhD in Information Systems this year.
In my application, I find that one serious problem of students in ZJU is that they dare not to apply B-schools' PhD programs directly after undergraduate study. I think it is an illusion that b-school is much harder to get in. In fact, there're a lot of students in top universities of Mainland China try and succeed every year.
Another problem is that, undergraduate studnets in School of Management of ZJU don't know there're such a chance to apply PhD, instead they apply master degrees intensively every year. At the same time, excellent students from Engineering School (our university is extremely strong in engineering)  don't have an awareness of OM and IS programs (I think OM and IS programs welcome engineering students) in US b-schools. I think b-school is much better than engineering schools in terms of student placement. Engineering studens don't apply OM/IS (they keep applying CS, EE, and ME), missing good opportunities in b-schools.
What do you think of the abovementioned two problems among ZJU students? What can we do to change it? Again, congratulations to your application results!

-- by 会员 boum (2010/3/23 12:10:51)

[/quote]

你觉得本科毕业申商学院很难是illusion？ 呵呵，我倒觉得是真难。。我没试过本科直接申商学院，我认识的wharton PHD的中国人，大都是本科毕业直接过来的。北大的最多，三个，都是数学系的。清华有个工业工程直接去wharton的 （这几位北大清华的都是排名数一数二的）还有两个中国人是在美国读的本科。另外有个finance 的中国phd是中科大的数学本科，在美国读的master。据一个朋友说，趋势会有变化，wharton 开始喜欢在美国读过master 的中国学生。可能考虑到中国学生基础都比较好，但是在美国读过master 可能对专业有更深的了解。

另外，理工科学生申商学院的优势是数学基础，逻辑思维和分析问题能力比较强。貌似CS和数学专业申OM/OR更受欢迎。。理工科学生唯一的不足可能就是对国外商学院做的科研内容不太了解。申请的时候不能只说我数学好或者编程好，就指望被录取。他们希望学生对未来有成熟的思考（包括研究方向和职业规划）和独立开展科研的能力。所以个人以为，工科学生如果准备申商学院，除了继续把数学和编程学好，还得去经济、管理学院旁听一些基础课。比如金融数学，宏观、微观经济学，测量经济学，应用经济学（我不太懂经济的分类，尽管开学后会修这些课，分错了别拍我。。）这些对OM中的revenue management 和dynamic pricing 来说应该都是基础知识。。


挺后悔当时在强化班没认真听课。。