What Schools are Realistic for my Background?

[Alaskah]

No, this is not quite a "What are my chances?" thread. And I didn't know where to post it since I am not in the application phase yet - hopefully next fall.

I have belonged to another college forum for some time now, and anytime I post any questions my feedback always seems to come from Ivy-league and other top tier students and parents. They all tell me that I should not bother getting a business degree anywhere other than a top tier school if I want good job prospects. That is fine and I understand that there is more recruitment at the top, but...I am simply not going to get into a top tier school. So I find much of their feedback, well, useless in my case. And I still want to pursue graduate school despite having to lower my standards.

So I am curious if anyone knows what level schools I could realistically have a chance at (Top 100? Top 50? etc.). I'm not saying to rate whether I would get in - just if you think it is within my reach or not. I am having no trouble finding programs to "fit" my interests, but I am having a great deal of trouble finding ones that I actually stand a chance getting into, or that aren't too low in the ranking/unranked/totally unheard of outside their city. So if I could have some "examples," that would help me quite a bit.

I attended Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. It is a small, private liberal arts college with about a 60% admissions rate.

I graduated last December 2010 with a BA in psychology.

My GPA was a 3.75, my major GPA a 3.89. I was magna cum laude with honors in psychology.

I was a research assistant for Summer 2009, Summer 2011 (still writing an article with my prof), and I did a year-long honors thesis study. So, roughly only a year and a half of research experience. Primarily in positive psych/rehabilitation and my thesis was on stereotyping and prejudice, so not relevant to what I want to study in grad school.

I have not yet taken the GMAT but I have no difficulty with testing. I find the verbal section to be really quite easy, and the math I simply need to relearn (I have always been good at math).

I am an excellent writer (don't let my informal "thread" typing fool you ), so I expect to write strong essays.

I have been employed as a human resources leader at a department store since January 2011. I will probably be staying there until I (hopefully) get into graduate school.

I have been looking at MA/MS and MBA programs with concentrations in marketing, particularly consumer behavior (my psych background should be good for this). But I would really like a PhD - the problem is my current loans will not defer long enough to finish a PhD and I don't know how I would pay on loans on top of living expenses for 4-6 years (if you have suggestions other than taking out more loans to pay on my loans, please share!). A master's is more realistic financially, and I don't think I'd mind working in industry for a while instead of shooting for academia right away.

If you'd like any more information, please let me know. So far I've been looking at University of Pittsburgh (PhD), Ohio State (PhD), Drexel (PhD), SUNY Baruch (PhD), Penn State University (MBA or PhD), Lehigh University (MBA), Rutgers (MBA or PhD), and Temple (MA/MS). I would like to stay in the northeastern US if possible - south of Massachusetts, east of Ohio, north of South Carolina, but if I find the "perfect" fit elsewhere, I will move farther.

Are any of those schools out of my reach completely, or perhaps not enough of a stretch? Or is that about the level I should be looking at? Again, I'm not asking specifically if I'd get in, no one would know, but if any are "red flags" that I have no chance, please save me the money and let me know.

I've also noticed that many, of not most, PhD students currently in some of those programs are international. Is it that much more difficult to get into business school as an American student?

I know people will probably say to apply to better schools just in case, but the application costs (especially for MBAs) can be more than $100-150 at some of the top schools. I believe Wharton's was over $200! I don't want to pay that much knowing I stand no chance.

Thank you for your feedback!

[Alaskah]

I should add that the reason I still included so many PhD programs despite financial hardship is that I'd still like to apply and see my offers, if any. If I still don't think I can make it through with my current loans ($70k, ick), then I'll sadly have to turn them down and go with an MA/MS/MBA.

[runonsentence]

Sent you a PM.

[Behavioral]

You and I have talked on the other grad school forum--I got by under a different psuedonym there.

Your profile (given solid 700+ GMAT and well-constructed statements of purpose) should get you into T50 and even some marginal T25/T30 depending on what research you're interested in. For example, if you're really into JDM, Florida or Colorado would be great fits. If you get your current paper published or at least well into the review process (at least R&R), then that'll play in your favor as well.

Regarding the international student thing: as a business school, yeah, internationals completely outnumber Americans. In marketing departments as a whole, it seems pretty balanced, and even skewing a bit towards Americans. In CB only? There are a lot more Americans than internationals. The reason why business schools have a lot of internationals is due to the more quantitative tracks (Finance, Econ, Strategy, Quant Marketing, MIS etc.) attracting Chinese/Indian applicants. The behaviorally-oriented ones (CB and OB) attract a larger slew of American (both US and lots from Canada) applicants, partly the reason because the US really promotes psychology more than just about any other country in the world. This, along with other factors, seems to create this weird distribution; but I don't think there's a bias against Americans--it's just an artifact from the types of applicants for different programs.

Lastly, depending on what your monthly payment is for your loans, you might be able to still pay it off while in school without taking more loans. Right now, I'm living in a 1BR/1BA apartment and am paying a mortgage on a house my mom's living in on the other side of the country with just my fellowship. Nominally, I have a pretty large stipend, but I live in a pretty expensive area (Evanston/Chicago); other schools with much lower costs of living give nominally smaller stipends, but adjusted for buying-power, you make more than I do here. Some schools are completely nuts and give their students LOTS of money in a relatively cheap city (Rice University and Washington University in St. Louis fund all their students at a high level in comparison to their city.). BSchool stipends are among (if not the) the highest in all of academia, so if married couples with children can scrape by on a Psychology PhD stipend, then I'm pretty sure you'd be able to, too, on a business school stipend.

[Alaskah]

I've seen some of your posts around here, and I believe I know your other "identity." It's just hard to get more than 1 or 2 responses in this field at the other forum, so I decided to branch out and see how many opinions I could gather. I hope you don't feel like I don't trust your opinions. I just have a tendency to research the heck out of something until I feel at least 99% confident in my decision.

I could probably live in a tiny studio apartment or something similar. That wouldn't bother me. I just wasn't sure whether the "advertised" average stipends that some business schools put on their websites was close to the real deal or not.

I also keep trying to remind myself that the stipends I see are based on just the fall/spring semesters. I have to keep in mind that I will make additional money over the summer somehow. The more I look into MBA and other masters programs, the more I want to just go for the PhD. I was pretty discouraged when I saw most students at the schools I was looking at were international, but I don't think I looked too closely at their specific interests within marketing. I'll keep a closer eye out for that.

[Alaskah]

I also suppose this should have been posted on the business forums. Of course, I did not scroll all the way down the page to see all of the field-specific threads until today I guess you can say I've been pretty tired lately. Not paying enough attention to things. But thank you for the feedback anyway.

[Behavioral]

Anytime. I research the hell out of any big decision I make, too.

The other forum (and perhaps the one most appropriate for this discussion) is http://www.urch.com/...s/phd-business/ I may have mentioned it in the other forum, and if I didn't, I don't know how it slipped my mind. I post there quite a bit, too, and the board gets a decent amount of traffic.

Lastly, even at my school where our stipend is pretty generous, it's not discouraged to take out loans just so people can 'enjoy themselves' more. The average (heck, even the minima of salaries in 2011) salary for a PhD in marketing completely trumps the average MBA salary even at top schools (mean and median starting assistant professor salaries are around $130,000/year [and this is collapsing across all universities, and not just R1]; the absolute minima last year was $70,000/year, which is definitely not a bad chunk of change considering you don't pay for tuition; check out the salary reports on AACSB and docsig.org for more stats). If paying back non-federal loans means you have to take out minimal graduate student loans, then that might be a more attractive alternative than pushing back your career X years, taking on debt for a Masters, and the opportunity cost of not making professor salary.

Regardless, though, it's ultimately your decision. You know your situation better than I ever will, but I just see going for a Masters a waste when you know a PhD is your career goal; most people who have MBAs and are now in PhD programs figured out they liked research after the fact.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Behavioral

[Alaskah]

I am really starting to turn back to the PhD option after doing more research and hearing your opinions on the masters. I have spent the better part of the day thinking about my financial situation. It is actually quite depressing to realize that a decent research assistantship pays about the same as my current salary, not including the summer teaching/research pay - I could be making more as a student right now! (Though I wouldn't have free rent). I know I couldn't afford applying to graduate school last year, but now I wish I had tried to borrow money from somewhere to make it happen. Being out of school for a year is already making it hard to focus and get back on track. Though, I've had quite a few health problems the past few months, so perhaps it is luck that I ended up not being in school through that. Much easier to call off sick from a low-paying job.

I would like to try to take the GMAT around February/March (not sure how flexible the scheduling is for that exam), and if I'm feeling very ambitious, take the GRE next summer. I may end up applying to a select few psychology programs that I've had my eye on just in case I don't fair well in business admissions. Not sure. I guess I like to keep my options open. And if I don't do well on the GREs, they won't be sent to the business programs anyway.

Once I'm done with this article for my prof I'll let him know of my interest changes and see if he has any other projects he can throw my way, or get me in touch with anyone. The loathing of my current job is serving as quite the motivator at the moment.

[Behavioral]

Yup. I did consulting for the better half of a year between undergrad and grad--it's one of the main reasons why I don't complain about what I'm doing right now!

[Alaskah]

This might sound like a silly question, but I've got to ask...would you include research studies conducted during undergrad courses to be "research experience" worthy of listing on a CV? My class sizes were always relatively small and in 3 of my psych courses we broke into groups and spent the semester designing our own research studies, conducting the studies, analyzing the results, and writing 10-15 page papers on them outside of class (the actual classes were lecture/discussion based, so most of this was done on our own time). I realize this was in the very early stages of learning research methods, but still, it was valuable experience. Would you list this on a CV? And how would it be listed (since it wasn't part of a prof's lab or working as a research assistant). Or do most schools just assume you've had this experience and so I should only talk about what I had listed above in my first post? I would think large universities would not offer this type of course work until junior/senior year when classes are smaller, but I started lab experiments in my psych courses the first semester of sophomore year. I always forget about those experiences since it was 2+ years ago and part of course requirements, so I never thought to ask about it before.

[Behavioral]

I'd briefly talk about it in my SOP. It kinda seems like you'd be padding your CV if you placed it there

[Alaskah]

Is it common for larger schools to also have this experience with their psych courses? I know of a couple other psych majors at smaller schools who didn't do research like this except in their one research methods course. So I am wondering how common it is to conduct multiple experiments your sophomore/junior year. I realize it is not the same as working on a "real" study for publication, but it gave me better insights to doing research than working with my prof even did. His work is primarily theoretical and so he does not actually do experimental studies.

[Behavioral]

I went to a fairly large R1 public school (~20,000 undergrads). I did something like this for a final project for an I/O Psychology course. The study was just an exercise to see how to formulate a research question, figure out how to collect and analyze data, and how to give a research talk.

Overall, it sucked because most of the class was not interested in doing reseach or anything close to it.

[Alaskah]

True, most students in my classes really did not enjoy it either. I find it a bit odd that being a research assistant sophomore or junior year and doing photo-copying and basic article research would be valued more highly than conducting beginner experiments start to finish. I didn't really expect to put it on my CV, but it was an idea to throw out there. I suppose a sentence or two in my SoP would get the point across.

I'm still considering taking a few courses at a state school before applying to grad school to see if I can get involved in more research specifically in an area aligned with what I'm interested in. I would hate to be asked about my current research experience in an interview and all I could say was, "I researched articles and co-authored papers with my prof...no actual experimental experience at all." ...again, aside from my thesis. I'm also thinking if I enroll this spring in the state school most of my loans will defer a bit yet, and I can put all of my money toward paying off the one with really high interest instead of spreading my pay out over several loans. My store manager also hinted that our store may be at risk for shutting down, so I can't really put too much faith in that position anymore.

I wish I had more "academic" folk in my personal life. My parents are clueless about anything relating to college and my mom gets very upset when I talk about moving away for grad school. I've actually noticed that she tries to place more financial burden on me and even borrow more money from me when I talk like that, as though she doesn't want me to have the funds to apply (this happened a lot last fall, too). So I keep my mouth shut most of the time and rely heavily on complete strangers online

[Behavioral]

"I researched articles and co-authored papers with my prof...no actual experimental experience at all."

You co-authored a paper without doing research? How does that work out? Haha

Anyway, having a thesis already places you ahead of a good amount of applicants at non-elite universities. At many of the schools I visited outside the Top 10, the majority of interviewees were career-changers with MBAs who didn't have any research experience at all.

Anyway, talk about those research studies in your SoP and really position it such that it shows that you like and want to do research as an academic. That's something that I don't think you should even attempt to just put down as another component of a CV since the experience is so rich and needs proper development.

And I hear you on the parents issue. Both my parents are immigrants and neither graduated high school, so even college was a completely foreign (no pun intended) concept to them. My mom still thinks my doctorate in business means I'm going to be a physician for business people. They were supportive of whatever I did, though, so there wasn't much friction in that respect. If your loans defer through part-time enrollment, why not just take 2 online classes at a community college or something? I did that to push my grace period out a little longer so I can just lump-pay all my loans. I was traveling for work a lot, so I couldn't do the standard class thing, so online was the perfect way to go for me.

[Alaskah]

It was all about working with theory and re-thinking it in a way few currently are - a literature review, basically. One project was co-authoring a chapter in a book on social psychological contributions to the practice of teaching assessment. The paper I'm working on now is reviewing research on positive psychology, applying it to physical rehabilitation, and pointing out the holes that need to be filled/studied.

Do people normally submit an entire thesis as a supplementary piece? I have seen suggestions to submit your best research paper, but considering the size of a thesis...although, mine was probably the shortest currently in MC's library . But I was also told it was "one of the most well-written" they've seen in "quite some time." So it's certainly something I'd like prospective advisors to see a part of.

The state college I'm looking at is about as cheap as my local community college (roughly $3-4k a semester for full-time), but it has many more course offerings than the CC. They actually have a consumer behavior course that I would love to take to get more insights and explore more research ideas. I have been pretty interested in social media for a while, and my thesis was on stereotyping and how emotions affect attitudes, which I believe is fairly relevant to my research interests for grad school.

...I also will need 1-2 more recommendation writers. I have others at my undergrad, but the letters would only be average if they remember much about me at all. So taking at least a few courses at the school will help with that.

[Behavioral]

That's research.

Being able to draw connections between papers and develop broad ideas and future research is all research is about, especially in CB. You didn't create an experiment or produce new data, but that's more logistical than fundamental. Being a good research requires being a good analyst, which means you need to be comfortable reading the literature (for hours and hours and hours and hours on end) until you can become quite compotent in a topic. Only then can you even begin to feel confident that your experiment will 1) work and 2) be unique/novel.

Submit your thesis. I don't know how long you think it is, but after spending the first two months reading anywhere from 4-8 articles/day has made me insensitive to length of papers. Before a journal publisher formats a manuscript, a double-spaced 12-point font Word document is typically 40-50 pages before becoming a 13-14 page paper in JCR or JMR for example, which is the average length for a paper in either journal. I looked at one of my honors theses from undergrad and remember thinking how long it was -- it'd only be around 12 pages once formatted to a journal's format. So yeah -- submit your thesis.

Your CC sounds expensive. California CC's are something like $26/semester unit, so that's why I mentioned them. If they're that expensive in PA, then yeah, skip them.

I know it might be stretching you thin, but try to do research (even if on a volunteer basis) and solicit a letter from the professor that takes you in. Even if you're the top student in a class, the letter will be average at best since the professor may not be able to speak to your ability/potential to conduct research given your relationship is limited to the context of a classroom environment.

[Alaskah]

My thesis was almost double the length of a typical article, and still one of the shortest in my library. "One" of your theses? How many did you do?? I actually did an extra semester of college just so I could do the honors thesis. After transferring I didn't find out about the honors program in time to really plan it out right. Worth it, though.

I also got the costs wrong...the CC is about $3k a year, whereas the state U is $3-4k per semester. I was able to look at the state U's courses for the spring finally, and for a large university, I was very unimpressed by the variety of course offerings they had.

I am also taking your advice and sending out an e-mail once this article is done to a prof in the economics department at my undergrad...he is the only one with research interests in marketing and consumer behavior in that program. My school does not have a business admin or marketing major. I'm explaining that I'm an alumni and would like to volunteer my time to any open projects he may have going. If I have no luck, I will branch out to surrounding schools. I wish I lived a little closer to UPenn to offer my time there, lol.

[Behavioral]

I did two -- one for economics (analytical paper on negotiations games) and one for psychology (gender differences in economic behavior). The two were related, so it wasn't much of a dampener since I only did one lit review: I just created a model for my econ thesis and ran experiments for my psyc thesis.

And best of luck with the marketing professor.