First year Ph. D. at a Top 10 OB/Management program taking Qs

Americanexpress

I am a first year Ph. D. student at a top 10 management/OB program. I would like to take questions from those of you who are planning on applying to OB/management related Ph. D. programs in the near future. However, I am also swamped with my own studies and other personal issues, and may NOT be able to answer some very basic and general questions. Please read the following instructions before you raise any questions.

1) There is a similar forum created by a 4th year Ph. D. student on businessweek website (He will graduate this year). The Link for that forum is http://forums.businessweek.com/bw-bschools/messages/?msg=37185. This forum is very helpful and I also personally benefited a lot from reading through that forum for my own application. I strongly encourage you to at least make some sincere effort to read through that thread before asking me any personal questions. If you have any SPCIFIC question unanswered after you read or at least skim that thread, please let me know. And i will try to give you some personal suggestions.

2) I am NOT taking questions like "How could I get into industry by getting a Ph. D. in management?" "How could I transfer to a MBA/ Masters program after being admitted into a Ph. D. program?" If you are not seriously considering a future career in academia, please neglect this thread.  Going to industry is normally regarded as a great loss for most ph. D. programs no matter how much you can earn from industry.

3) For general questions like when you should apply, working experiences, etc, I believe you should also be able to get appropriate answers from reading the forum I mentioned above or getting answers from other resources. I expect you at least have a basic idea about the application processes in most business schools before you raise your personal questions.

4) I am NOT gonna reveal my personal information. Please do NOT ask me anything about my school, stats, etc unless I offer to compare your situation with mine when answering your questions.

5) The primary purpose of this thread is to help those of you who may need some suggestions for your applications. I am only a first year student, not a consultant or expert in guiding your applications. Please keep in mind that my information and suggestions are NOT absolutely right. What I am going to tell you only represents my personal opinion. You should try to get as much information as possible rather than only relying on my information. Any helpful comments and suggestions from current Ph. D. students or Ph. D. applicants are also highly welcome.

6) Considering my own workload, I may not be able to answer your questions very promptly. But I will try my best.  

7) Finally, there may be many uncertainties in your application processes. Please do NOT put all eggs into one basket. I wish you the best of luck for your future applications.

rongdongc

I've been following the same forum listed above for over two years. You can find almost everything you neet to know about the application process to a biz PhD, but you need the patience to read through its nealy 5000 threads. Am thinking about compose a summary when I'm free in August.

Anyway, nice try!

Makeitmakeit

If there are so many "Don'ts", I suggest you just focus on your own study and do not show off here.

玺辰

Thank you so much. Americanexpress1.

I am also very interested to further my study in management.

(OB or Strategy)

I will keep looking this thread.

Best wishes to your study!

Americanexpress

以下是引用Makeitmakeit在2005-3-18 9:42:00的发言：
If there are so many "Don'ts", I suggest you just focus on your own study and do not show off here.

1) Thanks for your suggestion. But every Ph. D. needs to focus on his/her studies. We always keep this in mind.

2) The major purpose of this thread is to provide helpful information for those who already have a basic idea of Ph. D. in management/OB; but may still need further elaboration on how to improve their applications. That's the reason why there are so many what you called "Do NOT"s.

3) This thread is got nothing to do with showing off.  You are very welcome to offer your help here. I think at least some applicants would appreciate that. If you do not like the work I did here, I will appreciate your doing something to improve it. But I do NOT think creating this thread would be in conflict with your interests!

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-3-19 1:00:24编辑过]

Americanexpress

以下是引用rongdongc在2005-3-18 8:18:00的发言：

I've been following the same forum listed above for over two years. You can find almost everything you neet to know about the application process to a biz PhD, but you need the patience to read through its nealy 5000 threads. Am thinking about compose a summary when I'm free in August.

Anyway, nice try!

Rongdongc,

That's a great idea!! I hope more of us will be able to creat a similar thread for Chinese students.

jadelo

Thank you Americanexpress1 for willing to offer your insight for us.

I applied to several doctoral programs in OB/Management this year, but I guess I adopted the wrong strategy-- most of them are UC schools. Due to the financial problems at UC system, I think my chance to get admission this year is very slim. Therefore, I am considering to apply some second or third tier schools with late deadlines, and transfer to some other schools with better reputation after one year.

How do you think of this idea? I am not sure if decent schools would like to consider students transferred from other PhD programs. CDers seem to have different opinions about this.

My brief background: B.B.A. (in international business) and M.A.(in journalism) from the best unvi. in Taiwan; M.A. in social sciences from a U.S. shcool; under GPA:3.5; Graduate GPAs: both above 3.9; GMAT 750; 6 yrs working experience as an economic journalist; some minor research and teaching experiences.

Thanks again!

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-3-19 5:55:42编辑过]

lixiaoyang

sorry, what is a UC school?

Americanexpress

Hi, Jadelo,

Have you heard from all the schools you applied to? I mean some schools may still be in the process of their admissions, even some top programs. For example, as far as I know, NYU has not finalized their decisions yet. I do not know whether Berkeley and UCLA have made their final decisions for their OB programs.

At the first glance, I thought the major thing you may need to work on a bit was your research background. Your other stats look great. But you said you only had minor research experience. I do not know if you got recommendations from the faculty with whom you are doing/have done research. If not, this could be a setback.

You said you are considering applying to second level schools. You meant you wanted to apply for fall 06 admission? If so, I do NOT suggest you to do that. You definitely have time to improve your credentials from now till the end of this year. For instance, doing RA work for well respected professors and getting their letters. If you already got into some not so good programs, however, what you said could be a way to improve your application as well. But there is a tradeoff. As you said, not all schools welcome transfer students. Based on what I heard, what Chinese students normally did was to earn an MS degree from their Ph. D. program and reapply as a Masters graduate rather than a transfer Ph. D. In that way, some of them did get into some very good programs. But in your case, you already got two masters degrees. Getting another one seems to be redundant. To the best of my knowledge, some schools do consider transfer Ph. Ds. Kellogg, Stanford and Wharton are among them because I know that a couple of transfer students got into their ph. D. programs (not necessarily in OB/management) over the past years. However, those cases do not represent the mainstream. Also, if you only stay with a program for one year, it means you only have a semester to prepare your application. I do not know whether you have enough time to impress your professors and get strong letters from them within such a short period of time. In this sense, one more year seems to be a safer bet.

Your case sounds quite complicated to me. If possible, please share with me more information about what you had in mind. I hope I can give you more suggestions.  Good luck!

 以下是引用jadelo在2005-3-19 5:54:00的发言：

Thank you Americanexpress1 for willing to offer your insight for us.

I applied to several doctoral programs in OB/Management this year, but I guess I adopted the wrong strategy-- most of them are UC schools. Due to the financial problems at UC system, I think my chance to get admission this year is very slim. Therefore, I am considering to apply some second or third tier schools with late deadlines, and transfer to some other schools with better reputation after one year.

How do you think of this idea? I am not sure if decent schools would like to consider students transferred from other PhD programs. CDers seem to have different opinions about this.

My brief background: B.B.A. (in international business) and M.A.(in journalism) from the best unvi. in Taiwan; M.A. in social sciences from a U.S. shcool; under GPA:3.5; Graduate GPAs: both above 3.9; GMAT 750; 6 yrs working experience as an economic journalist; some minor research and teaching experiences.

Thanks again!

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-3-19 9:07:08编辑过]

Americanexpress

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以下是引用lixiaoyang在2005-3-19 6:55:00的发言：
sorry, what is a UC school?