Work Experience?

Question

Just had a quick question for the Ph.D guys here:

I'm going to be finishing up my undergraduate degree in accounting this year and I was wondering if work experience plays a big role in Ph.D admissions. To clarify, the Ph.D field that I am interested in is Accounting.  All other factors aside , is one going into a Ph.D directly out of undergrad looked upon positively, negatively, or with neutrality among most admissions committees? Please note that I'm not interested in the elite tier programs. The research demands placed upon students from those schools aren't worth it to me. Don't get me wrong, I would consider myself a hard worker and think I can handle the workload of a doctoral program, but I don't want to sacrifice lifestyle for the slight increase in pay that comes afterwards.

From what I've seen on various admissions sites, it appears that the majority of Ph.D students are 25+, but I'm not sure if this may just be due to a lack of younger applicants. I also noticed that the majority of business Ph.D students in the USA seem to be foreign nationals. Is there any particular reason for this, again, beyond simply having more qualified applicants of this status?

Any input would be appreciated.

swint · Answer

your goals are unclear to me. Do you want to get a PhD for the wage increase or for training in research? PhD is mainly a way to get trained in research. True, some jobs out there in the corporate world require a PhD, typically because they require some research skills. However, most jobs outside academia do not require such a skill set. If you are not interested in research may be pursuing a masters degree in relevant area or an MBA will do better to your career than a PhD.

To your question - typically work experience is nuetral to PhD admission. It can positively affect decision if the content of this experience tells something unique about you and your skills. It can negatively affect your application if it reflects a career trajectory that goes nowhere near research.

dusklife · Answer

I completely understand that work experience is irrelevant to research as a PhD. I wouldn't want to get a PhD to advance any kind of corporate career.

The only reason I asked this question was because when I look at the student profiles of various PhD programs, most students seem to have had professional accounting experience. I actually found this a bit surprising, because many older accounting PhD's I've contacted did not have any serious corporate experience prior to beginning a program.

swint · Answer

The issue of PhDs prior experience is a tricky one. No doubt that some work experience can be beneficial to researchers - knowing the field from the inside can help develop research insights as well as potential research topics. Moreover, your past experiences may be a starting point to get access to data for your research.

However, I believe that the change in grad students CVs is due to a different reason. During the late 90s the opportunity cost of higher education, especially with high ability, was huge. As a result it became more customary for people to graduate from college and spend few year in the industry to make a bit of money. This became a kind of culture or routine, but I can see this trend changes, and more and more young graduates apply directly to grad schools, as it was in the 60s and 70s. Again, I thin that the economic situation affects this change.

In any case, regardless of the career benefits, work experience per se has little effect on the application process.

dusklife · Answer

Thanks for the input. The opportunity cost factor makes a lot of sense, and those older PhDs I was talking about are indeed late 70s-early 80s PhDs.

cabro57 · Answer

From what I know, few PhD students at top programs (Stanford, Wharton, MIT..) have any professional experience in accounting. It becomes more common as you go 'down' the rankings, e.g. as you get into good state schools with a more important 'professional school' component (CPA preparation), such as Illinois, UT-Austin, and so on. They're not mutually exclusive but I know for a fact that some elite research schools could really care less about Big 4 experience, while those who want to graduate good teachers as well as researchers will give more weight to this type of professional experience.

To get back to your initial question, I don't think it can hurt (from a PhD admissions perspective) to have some work experience, but if you have 10 years of w.e. in an unrelated field, you need to address that in your SOP. On the other hand, to have work experience may also stop you from saying extraordinarily stupid things in your SOP as well (like "I think all auditors are corrupt and my research as a PhD student will show this").

The reason why you see that most current PhD students are 25+ is not always because they worked for a few years before going back to school to do a PhD (though it's my case), but also because most of them have Master's degrees (Econ, Statistics and so on) that took them a few years to complete before they got into a PhD program. A grad degree in a relevant field (with good results) is much more important than work experience (say Big 4) when it comes to evaluating research potential.

dusklife · Answer

Appreciate the response! I actually came across an AAA survey yesterday that asked about the importance of work experience, gmat, etc among doctoral programs and noticed a lot of what you've mentioned. For the most part, the lower tier schools preferred work experience while the upper tier schools didn't care whatsoever. The lower tier schools also did seem to care a lot more about teaching and want students to do more of it during their time in the program.

cabro57 · Answer

No one in PhD admissions cares about AACSB accreditation, especially if you have a degree from LSE. There are plenty of international students with master's degrees from utterly unknown universities in Bulgaria, Turkey, Pakistan... who do very well at the PhD level.

As for your 2nd question, I can't tell for sure, but I'd assume it depends on the difference in reputation between the two schools. With your example (Stanford vs. Cal St), you're better off with Stanford unless you get a terrible GPA there. If there's less of a difference between the schools' reputations (Stanford vs. Carnegie Mellon), graduating with honors or something like that from CMU will beat a mediocre Stanford GPA.

I've got two more general comments though:
1) GPA isn't that important in PhD admissions (as long as it's 'good enough' -- I'm not sure what that actually means)
2) I don't know if you should assume that you'll get a much lower GPA/courses will be much harder if you go to a top school. It's tougher to get in and it's probably a little tougher to get through the program but in the end I believe that if you have the potential/dedication to get 3.9 at Cal State you probably can get 3.8-3.9 at Stanford, if you can get in and are serious about it.

dusklife · Answer

Gotcha. That clarifies a lot, thanks for the great input!

Work Experience?

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