Just 2 cents from another person interested in a behavioral managerial PhD program.
I would say a 700 score would be the absolute minimum for tier 1 programs (Illinois & Texas at Austin), and at that point you still probably wouldn’t be considered in the first batch of students. I’m in the process of hearing back from applications right now (I have a similar post from a few months ago if you want to check that out).
As mentioned above, start to reach out to universities. I talked with several programs, including ones that didn’t specialize in behavioral or managerial programs and it was extremely helpful. They are very kind and respond well to genuine questions. However, make sure you don’t ask any questions that you could find on their website. If you ask too many, it sends the wrong signal that you’re not willing to do the research on your end.
BYU rankings are great for picking out programs. Here are the programs I applied to:
Illinois
Indiana
Pittsburgh
Emory
MSU (historically more behavioral, but lately has been more archival)
ASU (definitely archival, but they have a ton of managerial faculty and researchers)
Georgia Tech
South Florida
South Carolina would be a great one as well. They only admit every other year, 2020 being their off year, so I didn’t apply there.
Cornell and Alabama are much more financial programs than managerial. Those are programs you’d want to contact to see if they could or would want to support managerial research.
VT, Texas Tech and UMass might be a bit more archival than experimental as well. I did some research into them, but those would be good schools to contact as well.
If you have any questions, please feel free to message me.
P.S. My GMAT score was only a 690, and I’m guessing that some of my applications didn’t go as far as I would have liked because of that, despite my other qualifications.
Your GMAT score will be a very strong heuristic for programs, regardless of whether or not it reflects how well you would do. For better or worse. 700 would be a minimum, but if you want your application to be strongly considered by top programs, a 740+ would be a great goal.
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