Too Old to gain Admittance? Chances, anyone?

For littlefauss and any other "greybeards" interested in pursuing a business PhD later in life, I'm happy to report that I was accepted at one of the 6 b-schools that I applied to for (M)IS, and I'll be starting there in the fall. The university does not have a USN/BW ranked MBA program, but it does place in the top 75 in the UTD research rankings. There are several other factors that make it a good fit for me, so I am very happy to be going there. I believe that I got very close with a top 25 school (2 interviews and a lot of other contact), and made a couple of other waitlists (top 50 or so schools).

Was age a factor in the 5 rejections? I still don't really know, although I'll share some impressions. First of all my stats, which are solid, but not outstanding:

Age 45, 20 years w/e covering all phases of systems development, native English speaking male, BA Math from large metro univ. (20 years ago) GPA 3.0, MS Info Systems from small regional school (just completing) GPA 4.0, GMAT 680 (42q 40v), GRE 730q 710v (I used GRE when I could), no academic publications (a few practitioner pubs), no academic research experience.

Nevertheless, these stats are not out of line with the posted profiles of any of the schools I applied to. I asked for feedback from the Top 25 school that interviewed me and was told that the final decision came down, primarily, to their assessment of my motivation to do high-level research. (I think that I can reasonably assume that this was at least one factor with the other schools also.) While I don't think that my age had a direct impact on their decision (a couple of the current students in this school were around 40), I do think that the burden of proof of motivation was probably higher for me. For example, one of the profs I talked with assumed my primary interest was teaching when my SOP was pretty much entirely about my motivation to do research (although I am interested in teaching). I think that some actual research that my recommenders could have talked about would have helped with this, but my current school is a teaching school and my current program is heavily practitioner-oriented (like an MBA). Ironically, both my recommenders have contacts at the school that accepted me (one is an alum), which certainly didn't hurt.

So, here are my impressions: 1) the older you are, the more you have to convince adcoms that you want to do research. Demonstrating that is better than telling. Also, the higher ranked the school is, the more they may want "young lions" who will crank vast quantities of high-quality publications throughout their careers. If you're not young, you have to at least convice them that you're a lion. 2) As others have said on this forum, it helps to take a look at the program web pages to see if they have any current older students. Also, I think the older the profs, the better. 3) Recommenders that resonate with the adcoms, either through reputation or affiliation, are very useful.

I'm hoping that this will be some encouragement to other oldsters who may be considering a career change to academia, but are concerned that they won't be accepted. It was very close (I didn’t get accepted until last week--I had pretty much given up), but I got in. The hard part begins in the fall. I'm really looking forward to it.