PhD in Operations Management from Texas A&M U, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

[sjyoun00]

Hi,

 

I applied for a couple of PhD programs in business school especially in Operations Management (OM) or Supply Chain Management (SCM).

 

- School list I applied: UCLA, UNC, PSU, TAMU, UIUC, UCONN, U of Rochester, ASU, UF, Rutgers,  BU, USCarolina, UCIrvine, UMN

- Interview offer from: USCarolina, TAMU, UIUC, U of Rochester, UMN

 

Fortunately, I've so far got two admissions from TAMU and UIUC. I want to ask some ideas about decision criteria and if possible, more details about these programs. Possible decision criteria might be...

 

- Research interest and faculty member

- Starting point of research

- Attrition rate

- Size of the program (# of faculty members, # of PhD and/or Master students)

- Job placement

- Financial support

- Reputation of the business school / the university

 

I realized that financial support is not a big deal as they provide  enough money to live and study. I think how the faculty members support and care well PhD student is important, and it's directly related to attrition rate and starting point of research. To be more specific about research, TAMU do both empirical and modeling aspect of research whereas UIUC mainly focus on modeling side according to the comments from my acquaintances. My background is engineering and currently I'm interested in empirical research more but basically I want to try both of them while I learn methodologies.

So, I may summarize key points these two programs like this..

 

TAMU: good research fit, relatively large size of the program (9 phd students enrolled), reasonable attrition rate

UIUC: relatively small size (4 phd students enrolled), good reputation, maybe good job placement

(I am collecting more information about Job placement and Attrition rate.)

 

I want to hear some advice from you. Thanks in advance.

Edited February 11, 2014 by sjyoun00

[Buck-I]

How did your interview go with TAMU and what was the interview like? I have an interview setup next week with them for the SCM program.

 

Thanks