Evaluate my profile pls

Question

So I am interested in reading for a phd in accounting from a good US university. Kindly advice me on the best universities that in your opinion I should apply to and which you think I stand a chance to get offered a placement.

So I have a good undergraduate degree in accounting and an MSc with distinction in accounting and finance. Both are from good european universities. With respect to professional qualifications I have ACCA (Chartered certified accountant) and MCSE (Microsoft certified systems engineer). Currently I lecture in accounting and perform consultancy jobs for big 4 and mid-tier accounting firms. I have also wrote a research paper which has been selected for presentation at a number of international accounting conferences. My GMAT is 710.

As a last note, the areas of desired specialisation are in the accounting standard convergence process and accounting for executive compensation.

thanks in advance

rayparlour · Answer

Generally look at the professor's interest in research. DO NOT USE RANKINGS because if none of the professors at that school is researching what you want its kinda pointless to apply.

Generally the cutting edge schools include Michigan, Univ of Washington, Univ of Iowa, Ohio State, and UGA.

cabro57 · Answer

You're right about your first point, but then you add a rather arbitrary (and definitely debatable) list that kind of defeats the purpose. Would you mind to back it up?

To the OP -- When I was trying to figure out where to apply, I used two sources of info: 1) a very general B-school ranking (B-week), and 2) an academic paper that measured research productivity (I can't think of a reference right now but I can look it up if needed). Then I went and looked at the CV/personal webpage of all accounting faculty that were at those schools at the time. Whenever there was some kind of fit with one or more faculty members, I kept the school on the shortlist.

Your academic credentials look fine, but it'd probably be too risky to apply only to top-10 schools (e.g. Stanford, Wharton, Chicago..) with a 710 GMAT. If getting to the very best school possible is really important, you may want to retake it. Else, you may want to look for great faculty members at good (but not great) schools, and contact them to see whether they'd be available to help you out. There is a lot of movement among good b-schools so you want to make sure the professor you're targeting isn't going somewhere else before you get there.

rayparlour · Answer

From the PAR report of Doctoral those are up there on top 10 or so.

I was providing a list of schools to look into that is cutting edge in research and funding, not necessarily where he would choose to go.

jamtam2000 · Answer

Hi guys thanks for replying to my profile,

just two things that I would like you to keep in mind:

1. I need a university which may offer me a good financial aid package,
2. also given my interest in consultancy, I would like that in the future I will be able to combine my accademic career with some consultancy work. Given this, I think university branding apart from research quality may be important. What are your views on this?

Universities I had been considering included cornell, chicago, berkeley, yale and outside the US - the london business school.

Notwithstanding the above, I think that the 'ideal' university would be stanford under the guidance of Prof Barth. However, I dont think I stand a chance of being selected. What you think?

rayparlour · Answer

Most academic appointments are 9 months. Therefore you can supplement your income over the summer by teaching researching or other.

some professors have their own consulting or provide expertise to corporations. It depends on your background and experience.

You are looking only at private schools. In accounting there are some great public universities that are better than private ones.

Apply apply apply. Worst case is a "NO".

jamtam2000 · Answer

Guys,

on an other note what do you think about approaching professors with a draft research proposal prior to applying to universities. Is such practice frowned upon by US universities or conversely it is encouraged.

Cabro from you're replies it seems you are currently reading a phd in accounting. I am eager to know how has been the application process for yourself and any tips you think are useful for a successful application for a phd in accounting.

thanks

cabro57 · Answer

1) You provided a list of schools based on a single report that looks at a single facet of a doctoral program. I don't think that view is widespread. (more on that below) 2) The PAR report has nothing to do with funding. The rule of thumb at the PhD level (this is from experience; I don't know of a single publicly available source of data that looks at this) is that if you're concerned about funding you need to see it the opposite way from what you'd do for an undergrad or MBA: at most private schools, they'll waive tuition and give you a stipend if you accept their offer. For public schools, most will do the same, but will generally have a lower stipend and will add research/teaching requirements to make you "earn" your stipend. Frankly, I'd be extremely surprised if any state school gave its incoming PhD students better financial conditions than the top private universities the OP listed. (A lot) more on 1): PAR = Public Accounting Report. To evaluate doctoral programs, the faculty members have to answer the question "What PhD program do you have the most regard for in turning out quality accounting professors?" -- "Quality accounting professors" can mean very different things to different people. Given the report's emphasis on public accounting, I'd assume that professors who answer the survey are also interested in public accounting. (The same professors are also ranking undergraduate and graduate programs, where they rank schools according to who's the "most able to turn out potential partners", so they need to know something about public accounting.) I'm sure part of "quality accounting professors" means teaching accounting standards to prospective accounting professionals. I have no problem with that, but this is NOT how most people at research universities would define "quality" -- research productivity and impact will likely be much more important, and in terms of the "academic food chain" (e.g. salary and status) it is my experience that research beats teaching almost every time. Hence to _unconditionally_ put schools like Georgia in front of MIT is wrong (I have nothing against Georgia). Here's a paper that looks at research publications, the most important factor for tenure in all top universities (even including state schools where public accounting is important -- in those places, teaching ability will be factored in more heavily than at research universities, but publications will still be the #1 criteria): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=382930 The paper looks at PhD programs from 2 angles -- research impact for (1) past graduates and (2) current faculty. They adjust for the total number of graduates/faculty, which is important. Here's the top 10 for both of these angles: Based on past graduates 1 Rochester 2 Chicago 3 MIT 4 Oxford 5 Iowa 6 UC Berkeley 7 Stanford 8 Michigan 9 Lancaster 10 British Columbia Based on faculty 1 UC Berkeley 2 Rochester 3 UNC - Chapel Hill 4 Pennsylvania 5 Cornell 6 Stanford 7 Yale 8 Michigan 9 NYU 10 British Columbia Based on what the OP wants to do, these are undoubtedly very different rankings. I'm not suggesting PAR is wrong. What I am suggesting, however, is that to blindly follow PAR and choose Georgia, Mississippi or Oklahoma State over MIT, Yale or Columbia would be seen as idiotic by everyone involved, including the people at Georgia, Miss or Ok State. If you graduate from Yale (not in top 25 of PAR) and you're good enough, you can go anywhere and do anything you want with that PhD. I don't know of a single Georgia, Mississipi, or Ok State graduate who went on to teach at any of the schools listed above. (More on that in another thread, which I'll start right now.)

cabro57 · Answer

1) Research proposal = you need to have some idea of your interests, but having more than a very general statement of those interests will likely look as either pretentious or naive. A big point of the PhD program is to figure out what has been done before and how your skill set could improve current knowledge, so if you apply with a specific project in mind there's a good chance that either (1) it's been done before, or (2) it's impossible to do. Knowing whether you want to study executive compensation or earnings management rather than auditing, standard setting or financial analysts is fine but you want to look like someone who knows how it works.

2) I will hopefully be graduating from an Accounting PhD program this fall. I ultimately applied to 5 schools (a low number I think), was accepted at 3 (including my safety school) and rejected at 2 others. I had contacted professors whose interests seemed to match mine at all 5 of those schools (and some more). Factors that I think worked for me at the 3 places I was accepted to: a good GMAT score (760), some (small but still) past research experience -- a research essay as part of my Master's degree, a good SOP, past positive experiences at those schools with graduates from my alma mater (2nd tier Canadian school). Factors that worked against me at the 2 places from which I got rejections: my alma mater, unknown references from that alma mater, weak background in Economics (summary Linear Algebra stuff but no Econometrics or graduate Microeconomics), who knows.

As far as the application process itself, it went fairly well, and I got the feeling that whenever I actually got interviews it was already in the bag (I got offers from the 3 schools that interviewed me but those really weren't very tough interviews).

Evaluate my profile pls

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards