Sunday, March 26, 2017

General View of Marketing PhD in the US

So, after deciding to apply to Marketing PhD programs in the US, it was time to have a general view about them. These are some information I found.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has a very nice list of PhD programs in Marketing around the world, including over 100 programs in the US. It is very helpful, since it would be hard to know about all those programs without such a list. I found several links broken, and also some important universities missing from the list. But it's still a nice list.

The expected length of PhD programs in US is 4 or 5 years, depending on the school. Most of them, 5 years it seems.

There are two major concentrations for Marketing PhD: Quantitative and Consumer Behavior. Quantitative Marketing is like mathematics, statistics and economics applied to Marketing research. Consumer Behavior is like psychology and sociology applied to Marketing research. You should see which one is more related to your research interests. Very few schools offer other possibilities, like a concentration in Strategic Marketing or a combination of Quantitative and Consumer Behavior.

Competition is extremely hard. I saw a lot of people complaining about the hard competition for top MBA programs. But for PhD the competition is harder, even for lower ranked schools. PhD programs accept a much lower number of applicants. Just to provide an example, enrollment for Harvard MBA in 2016 totalled 1,859, while enrollment for Harvard Business School PhD was only 147. Since business schools have several kinds of PhD (Marketing, Finance, Management, and so on), each with its own concentrations, there are very few spots available. You may be well competing for the only available spot specifically for Quantitative Marketing PhD in a school, for example.

It seems all of them provide financial support, usually with a fellowship to cover tuition and a teaching or research assistantship with stipend. Stipend for business is better than several other kinds of PhD, buy even so it's not enough for a high standard of living.

Classes start in Fall (around August) every year, with deadlines for applications being mostly between December 15th of the previous year to February 15th.

Each school has its own specific requirements for application, but in order to apply you usually need:
- Transcripts and diplomas from each degree, starting with undergrad;
- GPA, which sometimes need to be converted;
- Resume/cv, tailored for academic purposes;
- Letters of Recommendation, usually 3 of them;
- Statement of Purpose;
- GMAT or GRE scores;
- Payment of an application fee, around $ 100 for each application;
- TOEFL or IELTS scores, if you're not from an English speaking country.

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