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<p>I think I actually made it quite clear that in the last few posts I was talking about business graduate programs (whether MBA or PhD). MBA programs care mostly about work experience and “leadership/managerial potential” (however defined), whereas business PhD programs are highly research-oriented.</p>
<p>Furthermore, undergrad business coursework, or even MBA coursework, surprisingly, bear little relationship with business PhD programs or with business academia in general. Earning high grades in such coursework therefore provides little information about whether somebody will succeed within a business PhD program beyond general information about work ethic. Research and resulting familiarity with what management academic journals want - or heck, even knowing the names of the top management academic journals (which practically nobody outside of academia has ever heard of or cares about) - is crucial. Somebody with a relatively low undergrad GPA (say around 3.0, or perhaps even less) but with an established research record in publishing or at least attaining ‘revise-and-resubmits’ (R&R) in top-tier mgmt academic journals is a far stronger candidate for top business PhD programs than somebody with a 4.0 but no research, if, for no other reason, because the faculty knows that starting from the very first day, they will be able to coauthor with the former to improve their own pub record. The latter will take years to become ‘research-savvy’, if he ever does at all.</p>