2017 fall review

Your GMAT score is probably high enough to make a top school take a look at your application. But if you're applying to a Finance PhD, for example, that GMAT score should include a 51Q.

If you're really thinking about PhD, your professional experience may be a little relevant if the school is interested in applied research. But even in those cases, it will be the least relevant kind of experience. They may even prefer someone without professional experience.

The most important kind of experience is research experience. Without some research experience, your chances of getting an offer from a top20 school is virtually zero. The second more important kind of experience is probably teaching experience. And, after that, professional experience.

Applicants who get offers for top20 PhD programs usually have the whole package: GMAT scores close to perfection, research experience, a Master's degree, top GPA, and so on.

Of course you should try. But even the most competitive applicants should apply widely.

PhD is a very different beast from MBA. Professional experience, extracurricular achievements, things like that may actually work against you if you don't know how to handle it.

Please note that there are very few offers from PhD programs in general. A school usually accepts 3 applicants at most for each concentration. Often, less than that. Schools accept less than 5% of a pool of very strong applicants. If I'm not mistaken, Yale informed it would accept only 1 applicant for its Marketing PhD, for example.

Rankings for PhD and MBA are also very different, please be careful about that. Some schools in the highest positions for MBA may be very low ranked for a specific PhD concentration.

Just for some context, my GMAT score is 750, with about 20 years of professional experience, 5 years of teaching experience, research paper presentation experience, undergrad from the top university in Latin America, an EMBA, and a Master of Science degree. All I got from the top40 schools in Marketing that I applied to was rejection and silence. It would be a mistake if I aimed only at top20 schools.

I'm slowly writing about my PhD application experience in a blog, maybe that may help you since it's really a lot of information.