Management PhD/DBA Admission Help

BentleyGrad
Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:47:58 +0000

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anyway, I’d appreciate any objective feedback. Thanks.