little_lady

Hi, I have the same issue, or even in more difficult situation, so I would like to keep informed of anyone responding to this topic . My background is purely business (Bachelor: Accounting & MBA) while I'm going to apply for learning science and design technology PhD. I have very little experience in education as I just started my teaching after my MBA. I have no research paper or thesis. Indeed, I never thought I would pursue career in research. The problem is that my employers and my former professors have nothing to comment about my "research ability" or related experience in the field. My plan changed after my MBA when I started feeling "empowered" that to pursue my passion in education, and I also realized I'm interested in researching. I could work on many literature reviews of students I mentored, reading research papers and reports and still interested in knowing more, especially about the topics I'm going to apply. It's strange, but I will give it many tries.

Thank you all for your advice, this means a lot to me. I have some entrepreneurial experience in education, which is as ZeChocMoose said, "limited". I will still try to apply this year. If not admitted, I would focus on conducting research next year

Good day fellas, I joined the forum today and this is my first post here after reading through some topics in graduate schools of education. I think of myself as an odd to the candidates pool of GSEs, especially in PhD...; so I decided to write down my thoughts, in hope that it will make me think clearly, feel more confident, and to get some of your perspectives here. Both my education and experience are in business, I also got an MBA from top 100 MBA school. I had GMAT of 710 for MBA, but probably need to take GRE for PhD in GSE. I have absolutely no academic research experience as I decided to replace graduation thesis for 2 courses in my bachelor degree to shorten my time of study, my MBA didn't require a thesis, just a project report at the end. Nevertheless I did freelance research work to earn money during my MBA study, so I learnt statistics and did lots of literature review in various topics. I co-found a small start-up for 1 year, and have been teaching "Design Thinking" during the weekend for students and start-up staff. This is the only obvious education-related experience I had. I did quite some readings in the academic papers regarding the topic. I dreamed of being a teacher when I was small, even before knowing the alphabet, but as life goes on, the dream faded away, until I came back from the MBA overseas, and feel more empowered to pursue my passion. I planned to apply to GSE in Stanford, Harvard, UPenn, Vanderbilt, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Indiana, and UW. Am I aiming high? I just have a thought of being odd can give me some good chances, as well as be a good contribution to the academic community with my background. And I also hope to receive more discussion for Learning Sciences PhD application 2019 fall here