In terms of the process of studying for a Ph.D., a Ph.D. in business school is the same as any other discipline. Generally, students take classes in the first two years, take a qualifying exam, participate in the department’s scientific research workshops every week, and complete the course requirements. After that, I devoted myself to scientific research and wrote thesis, and almost found a job and defended myself after graduation. Below I will summarize the differences between business schools and doctoral programs in other subjects.

First of all, since most good business schools do not have undergraduate programs, unlike other professional doctoral students who need to teach, business school PhDs generally do not teach, but they do MBA courses TA, which is very different from teaching assistantships in undergraduate and other graduate programs. MBA students have rich work backgrounds, and many of them do not have much mathematical training. This means that MBA courses are relatively simple from a mathematical perspective and focus on understanding the course content and integrating it with real business cases. To a certain extent, it is even more difficult to serve as a teaching assistant for these courses. After all, pure mathematical statistics has fixed methods and answers, while relatively imaginary things such as cases and analysis do not have specific routines. In addition, MBA tuition fees are relatively high. These students are elites who have worked in various industries for several years (mainly in high-income industries such as financial consulting). They often have high expectations for teachers and assistants, and sometimes they are difficult to deal with. However, being a teaching assistant is inevitable. On the one hand, if the school has needs, it will link teaching assistants with scholarship living expenses. On the other hand, if you become a business school teacher and need to teach MBAs after graduation, it is very helpful to contact this group early.

Secondly, from the perspective of research scope and methodology, many business school majors have similar settings in other departments outside the business school. For example, outside the business school, operations management is called industrial engineering and operations research, and organizational behavior is called Psychology, economics is also called economics. There are two obvious differences. Business schools have fewer doctoral students and rich tutor resources, which is a bit like the apprenticeship learning method, while science and engineering are more about peer

pressure learning between students. On the other hand, while business school scientific research requires theory, it needs to be combined with real business and economics. For example, business school economics teachers do less macro and labor education. It is precisely because of the focus that business schools have their own academic journals for each direction. When it comes to journals, I want to talk about academic output and influence. In addition to several fields such as finance and economics, business schools also have other directions such as operations management (operations

management), quantitative marketing (quantitative

marketing), and even accounting. The closed nature of some fields means that professors and doctoral students in this circle may be both suppliers and main consumers of academic papers, and cross-references and industry references from other majors are rarely seen. It is common for some professors in science and engineering to have a total number of citations of tens of thousands. A quant

marketing professor from a business school may be ranked number one in the world with a number of citations of several thousand. I think this is worth reflecting on, because business school professors and PhDs are all very smart people, and the quality of papers published in journals is also very high (after all, it often takes several years to revise an accepted article), but why are there no other fields? And readers in the industry? Is it a question of research topic selection, or is the field closed to the outside world?

Again, let me talk about employment options. Business school doctoral training programs are designed for students to become professors, which can be seen from the above-mentioned teaching assistants and topic selection focus of MBA courses. One is the lifestyle that I will discuss in the next paragraph. The culture experienced by a business school doctoral student is still very different from similar majors outside business school. So, if your purpose is to become a teacher, congratulations on entering the business school doctoral program. Of course, scientific research is not suitable for everyone. The proportion of Ph.D. graduates from excellent business schools who do not go to academia is actually not low. For example, in my field of operations management, not a single student from Stanford or Columbia went to academia this year. Chicago Booth Business Among the Ph.D. students graduating this year from the finance department of the college, I have not heard of anyone graduating to become a professor. So the question is, what can you do if you are not a teacher? Business school professors are paid relatively well. This number often becomes the psychological bottom line for people to go to the industry. In fact, there are not many positions in the industry that can pay doctoral students more than 200,000 US dollars after graduation, except for consulting. This is an industry that any professional doctorate can try, most of which focus on modeling and mathematical analysis, such as Federal Reserve economists and hedge fund researchers. Well, finance, economics and other majors that focus on empirical research have a future because there are directly corresponding positions in the industry and the public sector. What should I do in other directions? Compared with science and engineering, which requires five years of hard work in the laboratory for scientific research, a doctorate in a business school spends a lot of five years on cultivating soft skills. Therefore, in terms of hard power, operations management is not as good as operations research in an engineering school. Yes, people in quant

marketing can’t handle machine learning in computer science departments. These are not difficult to understand, right? And if you go to the industry, how many companies require doctoral students to teach and give presentations? Basically none, rely on It's all about hard power.

In the past few years, when looking for internships and jobs, I interviewed for quantitative analysis positions and electronic trading positions at investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and for funds such as AQR and GMO that focused on financial economics and fundamental research, Two

Pure quantitative funds like Sigma and Citadel, as well as IT companies like Google and Pinterest. Although I have received some offers, my overall feeling when faced with some regrets is that it would be better if the skill points were harder. Five years ago, I also had a PhD offer from Stanford EE. At that time, I had an agreement with Balaji

Prabhakar, who was working on intelligent transportation networks. My interest in the economic field and the regret that I did not study economics and management in my undergraduate degree made me come to Chicago. . Looking back on the journey of five years, I don’t know when the soft power gained through training will come into play. However, from the perspective of pure hard power knowledge, I would recommend to junior students who want to apply for business schools. If they don’t want to be teachers in the future, Unless you apply for majors in finance and economics in a business school, please be cautious.

Finally, let’s talk about the quality of life. To put it bluntly, a PhD from a business school makes a lot more money than a PhD from other majors. For example, Ph.D.s in physics, chemistry and computer science from the same school earn more than NT$20,000, and business school scholarships can reach NT$40,000 a year. After tax, the annual salary is more than that of a master's degree holder in some jobs. In addition, the remuneration of MBA teaching assistants is generally not low, and they can take on more teaching hours beyond the prescribed tasks. I have a student who works as a teaching assistant for MBA classes and earns tens of thousands per year. Thirdly, there are other ways to make money by working as an MBA tutor and consulting for companies. In short, unless you are pursuing luxury goods or a special social

party, your salary will generally not be spent. In addition to the direct economic advantages, there are also many hidden benefits compared to other majors, such as free computers, better offices, etc. Of course, the classrooms for classes are also taller. but. What I want to emphasize to my fellow students is that I suggest you not to spend too much time on these floating topics. EECS can learn the hard skills and go to Silicon Valley IT or quant

trading

Firm, there are many examples of salaries of US$300,000 in the first year, which is much higher than the starting salary of professors at the two highest-paid business schools in the world (Harvard and Chicago), and the annual salary increase in the industry is much higher than that of business school professors. Therefore, studying for a Ph.D. is not easy in nature. Although the business school is prestigious, I suggest that it is important for everyone to have a clear mind. It’s also good to have a down-to-earth experience with a PhD in science and engineering.

All things return to the same origin and reach the same destination through different paths. In short, business school PhD graduates are just like other PhD students, there is no specific job that they cannot do. Many companies do not pay much attention to the scientific research of PhDs when recruiting doctors, because the most useful things in real life are always the most basic and simple. For example, the C++ and data structure courses studied in the freshman and sophomore years are very useful. Advanced theories in academia are often not used in the real world, or can be used in few places. What the industry values ????is that people who have completed a PhD are generally smarter, can learn new knowledge quickly, and can think and solve problems independently. After all, many problems in the industry require solutions in a short time.

Finally, I hope everyone can be a "coward" and follow your heart. Don't be attracted by superficial things, look at your true interests. There are so many things that can be explored in life, but if you work in any profession for less than 2 to 3 years, you won’t be able to understand many in-depth things. To achieve some success, you have to work in an industry for a few more years, five years. Maybe even longer. Working in the same position for many years is actually a very big commitment in life and requires interest. Life is short and there is not much time for you to explore and experience different careers. Use the elimination method and you have to choose one to pursue. Today at noon, I had dinner with friends in the Google cafeteria in New York. Google employees said that the company is too complicated and has too many existing projects and codes. Even the management can't bear to see Google turning into a subsidiary of Alphabet. New employees here basically can't do much in the first two years because they are familiar with this complex company. Many employees came from investment banking, fund quantification or IT departments. Everyone realized that finance is a trap and thought they could make money by working on Wall Street. Later, they found out that only a few MD bosses made money. I think it is true. Under the current economic and regulatory situation, investment banking salaries are indeed not high, and bonuses are not the same order of magnitude as before 2008. It is a place to train industry talents. Only the income of a buyer company with good performance can be as high as that of an IT company like Google. On par.

Business schools are divided into MBA degrees and MS degrees. MBAs are provided for people with work experience, because many MBAs are case-based lectures. If you have no work experience, you will not understand the lectures. MS degrees include finance, accounting, marketing, MIS, business analysis and other majors. These majors do not require work experience. It is recommended to choose according to your own conditions.

To apply for a business graduate degree in the United States, you must first take the TOEFL and GMAT.

The professional names at Oxford and Cambridge are both mres or mphil, but they are also taught. When I searched the official website, I also found them on teacht