Howdy guys, I must say I am thrilled to have stumbled across this forum, I have been looking high and low for a PhD forum, specifically a PhD in Business forum. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is academania, and I'm currently 25 years old. I graduated from a mid-tier university in Canada and right from my undergraduate years, I have always had the ambition of becoming a business professor, more specifcally a professor in Management and Organizational Behavior in part because I had great interest and passion for the subject. Currently I work for a Fortune 500 top 10 company.
Below are my basic statistics just to give you a rough idea of my background:
a) Major : Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) in Business Administration and Economics
b) CGPA : 3.65/4.0 (note : my school does not use a 4.0 scale, so I had to roughly convert it on my own)
c) Research Experience : Minimal (I was given the opportunity to be a RA in my final semester, however my research work mainly constituted on scouting for relevant articles which contributed to my professor's conference paper and I have completed a number of term papers which require some form of basic research (primarily journal reviews) )
d) Teaching Experience : Extensive (I was given the privilege of becoming a Teaching Assistant (TA) for a management course for over 5 academic semesters)
e) Math background : I have taken 2 courses business statistics only, nothing overly advanced or heavy.
f) GMAT : yet to be taken, aiming at 720 (however I feel I should hit around 680-720 , don't want to be too ambitious here
g) Professional experience : I have been working for a large MNC for nearly 2 years now.
Below are some of my questions:a) I plan to concentrate on an academic career in Organizational Theory and Behavior. To accomplish this I plan to do a Masters Degree first as my undergraduate degree did not equip me with enough quantitative and research methodology experience. I know that there are a few schools in Canada that offering MSc programs in Management,
are there any schools in the US that offer a similar Masters degree program (apart from the University of Florida)
b) Does professional experience carry any weight when applying for research based programs? (Masters & PhD)
c) Given my background information, do you think it's wiser for me to straightaway consider applying for PhD instead of Masters? I have looked through a number of universities in Canada and most have mentioned that in order for an undergraduate to be admitted directly into a PhD program, he/she must have at least an A or A+ average in their final years of undergraduate study? Is this really true in all universities?
d) What are the top schools for Organiztional Behavior/Theory? I know Sauder (UBC) and Kellogg (Northwestern) are reputed for churning out high quality assistant professors in Org. Behavior/Theory, but are there other schools besides these two? (I'm quite focused on getting into these 2 schoosl, but would like to keep my options open).
The following are more generic academic/PhD questions:a) I noticed some professsors have titles in front of their teaching interest position, for instance Dr. John Doe, Harry Newman Professor of Management, University of Athabasca. How does one get that "Harry Newman" title? Is it an award? Is it only conferred to Full fledge, tenured professors?
b) I do realize that when a phd student passes his/her comprehensive exams, he/she becomes a PhD candidate and will be given teaching assignments. Approximately how much per academic year/semester do these PhD candidates get paid teaching a class term? Are they even paid for their teaching services in the first place?
c) Are there good websites for PhD Aspirants? I'm looking for a website which will help provide some excellent resource on guidelines for those who are interested in a career in academia
Final thoughtsAs you can probably tell, I am quite enthusiastic about pursuing my career in Academia. I purposely took time off from undergrad school to build some real world experience. Even whenever I get some free time right now, I still think about topics that I can use for my thesis/dissertations, I do read quite alot, and I have already started reading articles which are of some relevance to my research interests. I guess I'm doing all this so that I don't lose sight and focus on my pursuit back to academia.
Have good day!