Business to Learning Sciences Research

[little_lady]

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

Edited April 23, 2018 by little_lady

[t_ruth]

As you will no-doubt read elsewhere on this forum, for a PhD, you apply more to a person than a place. Do you have specific research matches at those listed institutions? That will matter a lot in their judging of your application.

Hard to say how competitive you will be--applicants are judged by experience and GRE, yes, but perhaps more by writing and content of research/interest statement, so focus lots of attention there.

[ZeChocMoose]

I agree with t_ruth.  You are going to need a really convincing statement of purpose that addresses why a PhD in Education makes sense and is necessary for your career goals. Also you need to identify faculty that you want to work with at each of these institutions. 

I sat on a couple of admissions committees back when I was a graduate student and the applicants with limited education experience had a difficult time getting admitted.  My guess is that you will end up getting referred to the master's program.

[little_lady]

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

[VickyG]

@little_lady Same here. My background is not related to education whatsoever, and I'm applying for PhD in education this year. My limited experience in education is working in a non-profit on education exchange projects and then co-founded an education start-up and teach courses here.

How is your application going? I'm also aiming for UW and Indiana, other schools on the list are NYU, Columbia and Northwestern.