PhD FAQs

An academic career is an often overlooked option in the business world.  Browse through the questions below to see if it's something that interests you.  The information was provided by this  former BYU–Idaho student:

Steve Courtright, Ph.D. Student
Department of Management & Organizations
Henry B. Tippie College of Business
University of Iowa

Questions are divided into the following categories:

About an Academic Career

PhD Programs

Preparing for and Applying to PhD programs

About an Academic Career

 What can I do with a PhD?
The majority of PhD graduates go on to fill positions as professors at public and private universities. In most schools (except BYU-Idaho and a few others), you start off as a tenured assistant professor. You are then given a set time period in which to publish a certain amount of research, successfully teach a number of classes, and render service to the university. This is referred to as the tenure process. Being granted tenure essentially means that you cannot be terminated from your job except in very major cases. After you reach tenure, you are then promoted as an associate professor, where you continue to research, teach, and give service to the university. If you continue to be successful, you will finally be promoted as a full professor.

Along the way, especially after tenure is granted, many (if not most) professors do consulting on the side. Some go into administrative positions at their universities. Many write books for the popular press and textbooks. Ultimately, there are a number of directions you can go as an academic.

Some PhD graduates never go into academia. Instead, they immediately go to work for consulting firms, government agencies, and large corporations where research and analytic skills are needed.

What are the advantages of an academic career?
Many academics will agree that the #1 advantage of an academic career is the flexibility that it gives you. You are essentially an entrepreneur of your time. You have very little direct supervisory oversight. Thus, the direction of your career is largely driven by your own interests and work ethic.  Academic careers also offer a great work-life balance. There is typically very little travel required. In addition, you are able to continually learn and be challenged in your work. There is not a lot of monotony in your job. For example, when I was applying for PhD programs, I asked my future advisor what he liked best about his job. He responded that he liked coming into work and asking himself, “What do I want to study today?” Finally, you are extremely flexible during the summer months, which is great for when your kids are out of school. 

What are the disadvantages of an academic career?
There are a lot of politics involved in academic departments, which can get really old after awhile. Academics sometimes have to jump through lots of bureaucratic hoops to carry out their job functions. In addition, sometimes you may be required to teach nights and weekends, especially if you are assigned to teach an off-campus or Executive MBA course. 

Is it hard to find a job as a business professor once you have a PhD?
No. In fact, several popular business magazine articles and academic research papers have recently been written regarding the scarcity of business professors and the danger that this presents for business schools. This is especially true for accounting and finance professors, where the lack of academics in these areas has been labeled by many in the field as a “crisis”. This is one of several reasons why business schools tend to pay their professors more than liberal art schools do. It also helps explain why from my experience at Iowa, no one has graduated with a PhD in Business and been unable to find a job. Here are some recent placements of Management PhD graduates from Iowa during the last 4 years (the programs you apply to should have similar placement lists posted on their website):

University of Notre Dame
Texas A&M University
James Madison University
Creighton University
Oklahoma University
India School of Business
Australian Graduate School of Management

What kind of salary can I expect as a business professor?
It really depends on the school that you work for and your area of concentration. Accounting and finance professors get paid the most of all the business disciplines. Starting annual salaries for many accounting and finance professors start higher than $150,000. Marketing, management, and operations management professors tend to be paid relatively the same at most schools, while economics professors are typically paid the least. To further answer this question, below is a list of starting salaries that I have recently seen for assistant professors in my area of concentration (organizational behavior, human resource management):

University of Idaho:  $85,000
Creighton University:  $105,000, plus $7,000 of summer support
Oklahoma University:  $110,000, plus $20,000 of summer support
Georgia Tech University:  $130,000, plus $20,000 of summer support
University of Florida:  $140,000, plus $10,000 of summer support

My professors at the University of Iowa all make annual salaries well above $100K. In addition, professors typically make money on the side through consulting and writing books. In sum, business professors usually make very good money. At large universities, often the only professors who make more than those in the business school are medical, dental, or law professors. However, in most cases, the salaries between these departments tend to be relatively similar.

Who should consider an academic career in business?
Academics have a lot of autonomy in how and when they work, which means that only those who can work independently without a lot of oversight should consider an academic career. As a professor and a PhD student, you are essentially an entrepreneur of your time (only you get a consistent pay check!). Also, it is essential that you have a keen desire to continually learn and develop new ideas. You should love to teach and not feel apprehensive about standing up in front of people and presenting concepts. You need to enjoy reading and writing, and like discovering ideas through statistics and data analytic methods. Finally, you should have somewhat “thick skin”, that is, you should be able to accept criticism without being destroyed by it.

What if I want to just teach business courses and not do any research – should I go ahead and earn a PhD anyway?
If you are in this situation, there are a couple of things that you could do. First, there are a few PhD programs where teaching is the larger focus of the curriculum. However, the trouble with selecting a program like this out of a desire of not doing research is that you will still have to do a dissertation in order to get your degree. In other words, there is no possible way of getting around not doing research in a PhD program, even if all you plan on doing once you have your PhD is to teach. In addition, most universities and colleges have a tenure-track system where your job is contingent on your research activities. BYU-Idaho is definitely the exception rather than the rule when it comes to not having faculty who are required to do research. Finally, I can guarantee you that if you feel that research would not be an enjoyable thing to do, then a PhD program will be quite miserable.

In my opinion, the better solution would be to get an MBA and some great work experience, and then apply as an adjunct professor at a nearby university.  Schools are using adjunct faculty more and more. While adjunct faculty members do not have research requirements, they do get paid much less than tenured faculty. However, if you do indeed become an adjunct faculty member, you will likely continue working a full-time job at the same time that you are teaching classes. Some adjunct faculty members eventually get hired by the university as full-time lecturers, where they continue to have no research requirements.   

PhD Programs

How long do PhD programs usually last?
With or without a master’s degree, PhD programs typically last 4-5 years, depending on the school and the program that you attend.

What is the typical structure of a PhD program?
The first 2-3 years of a PhD program usually consist of three important things. First, you take content-specific and research-related courses. On one hand, statistics and research methods classes are a huge element of your coursework, and from these you learn about specific empirical methods that enable you to review other people’s research and to conduct your own research. On the other hand, the content-specific courses help you get acquainted with the literature and find future avenues of research within the subfields of your concentration. For example, in my Management program at Iowa, I take courses in leadership, motivation, group processes, personnel selection, training, and compensation, in addition to several semesters of statistics and research methods courses. Second, you will likely begin getting involved in research projects with other faculty members right away. Your duties can range from anything to literature searches, to analyzing data, to creating surveys and questionnaires, to writing the actual research paper. You work on these projects all with the hope that they will at some point be submitted to and accepted by an academic research journal in your field. Third, most programs fund their students through teaching and research assistantships (see below). Thus, you will spend a certain amount of time each week assisting professors with their courses by doing things such as giving supplementary lectures, grading papers and tests, and planning course content.

After you finish your coursework, you will typically be required to take comprehensive exams (“comps” for short) in order to be admitted into PhD candidacy. The comps essentially test your knowledge of the content areas that you have studied in your program. It is a grueling and time-consuming process to prepare for and take the comps, but once you are done, you officially enter the final stages of the PhD program.

The last 2-3 years of the program almost always consist of doing your dissertation, working on other research projects, teaching classes independently, and applying for jobs. Your dissertation topic will most likely stem from the interests that you have cumulated from doing research or from your coursework. The dissertation is an extremely important process not only because it has to be completed in order for you to receive a PhD, but also because it serves as a foundation for your future research emphasis. Good dissertations will end up providing 1-2 future research journal publications that count toward earning tenure (at least I hope mine will!).

What are PhD classes like?
PhD courses are not very typical of what you encounter as an undergraduate. Enrollment in PhD programs tends to be very small, which means you have much fewer people in the classes. For example, I have taken some classes that have had only three students. As a result, PhD-level courses are highly interactive, and are thus referred to as seminars rather than lectures. As far as the actual classes go, your professor will typically give you a stack of research articles related to a specific topic and require you to read them before class. During the seminar, the professor will then present his or her own comments on the article, and then solicit feedback from everyone else. Every professor I have had weighs your grade heavily on the extent to which you participate in the discussions. Although this will vary at each university, the seminar classes are typically very long – 2 ½ hours! However, in my case, they are held only one day a week. Many professors require that the students write an extensive research proposal or literature review on a specific topic related to the course content, and many give final exams.

How many students are typically in a PhD program at a given time?
Again, this depends on the university, the concentration, and the amount of funding that is available for graduate students. However, at least in my field (management), programs typically have anywhere from 8-15 people enrolled as PhD students at a given time. Economics programs traditionally have many more students than that.

How much do PhD programs usually cost? What kind of financial support can I get as a PhD student?
One of the greatest advantages of PhD programs versus MBA, law, and other professional programs is that students typically receive funding. This means a couple of things. First, it usually means that tuition expenses are completely waived – yes, that’s correct…you do not have to pay any tuition in a PhD program. Second, this funding comes because most schools hire PhD students as teaching and research assistants, which means you receive an annual stipend to cover a portion of living expenses in return for your labor. These research and teaching “assistantships” are an essential part of the PhD experience, and they typically require 10-20 hours per week. I have seen stipends as low as $11,000/year at some universities, but as high as $19,000/year at other places. At Iowa, we receive about $16,500/year. In addition, some schools give students who are working on a number of research projects during the summer months a certain amount of support money (at Iowa, this is around $2,500). Finally, some schools give graduate students with assistantships great deals on health insurance.

Preparing for and Applying to PhD programs

In what areas of business are PhDs offered?
Most school offer PhDs in accounting, finance, marketing, management science (operations management), management (organizational behavior, human resource management, strategic management), and economics.

What types of applicants are PhD programs looking for?
PhD programs are basically looking for applicants with a keen desire to do research and to teach, in that order. They want students with a record of high academic achievement (i.e. good grades) and exceptional test scores (GMAT or GRE; see below). They also look at your work or research experience. The best advice I can give about this question is this: PhD program recruiters are typically interested in one principal thing, and that is how well they think you can do research. PhD degrees are research degrees, not teaching degrees. Recruiters will want to see that you are committed to doing research. From what I have seen, if research is not enjoyable to you, then a PhD program will be absolutely miserable. Faculty members who look at your application will be looking almost exclusively at how committed and prepared you are to doing scholarly research.

What are the testing requirements for applying to a PhD program?
You will be required to take either the GMAT or the GRE, depending on the program and the concentration to which you are applying. Economics programs traditionally only accept GRE scores, as do many finance programs. However, most of the other concentrations accept either the GMAT or the GRE.

What kind of score do I need to get on the GMAT or GRE to get accepted?
PhD programs place a great deal of emphasis on entrance test scores. The typical threshold that you should aim for is to score at least in the 90% percentile. In addition, because math and statistics are such an integral part of doing research and being an academic, schools tend to look especially close at your Quantitative scores on these tests. Therefore, your scores on the Quantitative sections should be relatively high. In the Management PhD program at Iowa, the average GMAT score for those who are accepted typically hovers between 680 and 740. 

What courses should I take to prepare myself for a PhD program?
This depends quite a bit on your area of concentration. I would suggest that prospective students in accounting, finance, economics, and management science take lots of economics and math classes. Specifically, these concentrations require quite a bit of background knowledge in calculus, so prospective students should take a reasonable amount of calculus classes before applying to these PhD programs (schools will be looking for this). For prospective management and marketing PhD students, statistics and econometrics are good classes to take, as well as research methods courses in departments such as sociology or psychology. Finally, it goes without saying that taking courses in your area of concentration is a good way to prepare yourself.

Do I need to have a master’s degree before I get a PhD? Do I need work experience?
Not necessarily. For many PhD programs, having a master’s degree certainly won’t hurt you, but it may not always help you either. For example, many of the Iowa faculty members do not have MBAs, and neither did I when I applied for PhD programs. As stated above, what PhD programs are looking for is evidence of your desire and ability to do academic research and to teach. However, master’s degree requirements and preferences do tend to vary between schools and concentrations (e.g. accounting programs often want applicants to have an MBA or a MAcc). Therefore, in investigating which schools to apply to, be sure to look up whether the program requires or places a strong emphasis on applicants having a master’ s degree prior to admission to the PhD program. Some do, and some don’t.

Do I need to have specific research interests before I enter a PhD program?
Not necessarily. You should definitely know what concentration you want to go into (e.g. accounting, management, etc.), and probably have at least a very basic idea of the topics that you are interested in studying within your field. However, it’s pretty rare to know exactly what you want to do research on. For example, I knew before I applied to Management PhD programs that I was interested in the topics of leadership and compensation. However, I had no idea of exactly what I wanted to research in those areas because I was not very familiar with the current research being done. For that reason, good PhD programs will get you exposed to doing research with different faculty members almost immediately upon arriving. Furthermore, you will have content-specific courses during your studies that will help you get acquainted with the research in a particular area. This will then help you figure out what topics are naturally interesting to you, and which areas have some room for further work. As for me, coursework and research experience has helped me solidify my interests in leadership and compensation a little more, as well as introduced me to some other areas that are naturally interesting to me.

When should I start applying, and when will I find out if I’ve been accepted?
You should begin applying to programs in the fall of the year before you plan to enroll (e.g. apply in fall 2008 if you want to begin a program in fall 2009). Each school has different deadlines, so make sure to check those very closely and have your applications submitted on time. I would suggest that you have your application materials submitted and/or mailed at least a week before the due date. This means that you’ll need to begin the process of obtaining letters of recommendation (see below), copies of your transcripts, and other needed materials far in advance of a program’s due date.

As a rule of thumb, you probably won’t start finding out whether you are accepted to a particular program until at least a month after the application due date. If schools are interested in you, they will typically call you for an interview prior to your acceptance. For example, I had two phone interviews with the PhD program coordinator at Iowa before I found out that I was accepted. When and if you get rejected from a school, you will usually receive an e-mail or a letter from them. Those rejection letters are a bummer, but don’t get discouraged. I received two rejection letters (one in less than two weeks of submitting my application!) before I found out that I was accepted to Iowa.

How do I know which schools I should apply to?
Applying to PhD programs is much different than applying to, say, law school or even an MBA program. For example, rankings and university name recognition are not nearly as important for PhD programs as they are for professional programs. This is largely due to the fact that in applying to PhD programs, you are essentially applying to be an apprentice to one or more researchers. Indeed, that’s a useful way to think of a PhD program – an apprenticeship. As such, you should avoid applying to a program (even an Ivy League school) just because it has a big name. In fact, many people from programs like Iowa, Michigan State, Florida, and others get greater positions and earn more money than graduates from Ivy League schools like Cornell.

In other words, I would recommend that you apply to a particular school because you’re interested in working with a specific professor or group of professors. For example, perhaps you are initially interested in studying organizational development, and Professor So-and-So at University of Whatever is currently working in this area. Well, if that’s the case and you are truly interested in working with this professor, then I would recommend applying to that university, and explain in your personal statement that you are interested in this particular program because you want to work with Professor So-and-So. Doing this tells people at least three things: 1) you’ve done your homework and you know what a PhD program is about, 2) you have a very basic understanding and/or interest in the field, and 3) you see yourself as being a good fit for the program.

Finally, to do what I have suggested above, you will need to do a substantial amount of homework prior to the application process to find out which programs and professors are best for your particular interests. When I was applying to schools, I searched out and poured over faculty members’ profiles on their school’s websites in order to find out their current interests and research emphasis. This led me to apply to Iowa and a few other schools that I felt had specific professors with whom I was interested in working. 
  
How many schools should I apply to?
The best thing I can suggest is to not kill yourself, but to also not sell yourself short. In all honesty, I probably applied to less programs than I should have. For example, I applied to four PhD programs (and one master’s degree program), but I would like to have applied to at least two more. However, at the time I was applying to schools I was just too busy to do more. Therefore, I took my chances and applied to the programs that I was most set on getting into. Conversely, some people apply to a dozen or more schools. In any case, this is a decision that you will need to make based on your own interests and on the circumstances in your life.

In deciding how many and which schools to apply to, I would suggest adopting the following strategy: once you’ve done the research that I explained in the previous question, classify your preferences into “stretch”, “safety”, and “in between” schools. For example, the PhD programs that I applied to were Wharton, Michigan, Iowa, and Purdue. In addition, I applied to a master’s degree program at Ohio State. Wharton was obviously my “stretch” school, as was Michigan. Iowa and Purdue were my “in between” schools, and Ohio State was my “safety” school. Well, it turned out that I quickly received a rejection letter from Wharton, and I was eventually turned down by Purdue as well. Fortunately, Michigan put me on the final list of candidates, but in the end they didn’t accept me. I was quickly accepted to Ohio State, and as you know, I was finally accepted to Iowa.

In sum, the strategy that I described above worked well because I was able to spread my risk (just as you learn to do in your finance courses). Having one or two safety schools is important. However, it’s also important to not sell yourself short by not applying to some top schools. Of course, make sure in doing this that you follow the suggestions that I enumerated in the previous question.

What is the best way to obtain letters of recommendation?
First, and perhaps most importantly, get letters of recommendation from professors who know you best. I have heard time and time again that faculty members who review applications get turned off when they see a letter of recommendation from someone that is famous or otherwise holds a well-respected position, but who clearly does not know the applicant very well. As an example, unless you have had an opportunity to mingle closely with him, or he has had an opportunity to closely observe you in an academic setting, I would highly suggest not asking President Clark for a letter of recommendation (not to mention that he’s an extremely busy guy!). Instead, ask for letters of recommendation from faculty members who have seen you repeatedly in action as a student.

For example, what I did (that seemed to work well) was to carefully plan a strategy around getting my letters. Specifically, I asked three different professors who had each observed me in uniquely different roles to write letters for me. I worked as a TA for one of those professors, so I had been given the opportunity on a few occasions to teach his classes when he was out of town. Therefore, I asked him to write a lot about my ability to teach. I also worked closely with another professor on a small empirical research project. In addition, I had taken a class in labor economics with him that was run like a PhD seminar, as well as an econometrics course. Consequently, I asked him to write a letter that emphasized my research experience, statistical ability, and scholarly potential. Finally, I had another professor from whom I had taken two classes in which I had done well. He was also a department chair at the time. Hence, I asked him to write a letter that expounded on my ability to do well with studying complex material.

Once you have your strategy planned and your recommendation letter writers picked out, you need to make the process as easy as possible for your recommenders. Some suggestions for doing this are to deliver them a packet with all of the needed materials, including stamped envelopes with addresses and detailed instructions related to each letter for each school. In addition, I would suggest including a cover letter that explains to them the programs that you’re applying for, the reason why you’re applying to them, and why you are specifically asking them to write you a letter of recommendation (e.g. because the professor has seen you teach, and you want him to emphasize the fact that you’re an effective instructor). Finally, make sure to approach your proposed recommenders before you actually give them the packet of materials, and make sure that they are okay with doing it. And of course, it goes without saying that you should give them plenty of time to complete their letters. That means you should give them the materials far in advance of the application due date.

What are the odds that I’ll actually get accepted to a PhD program?
Each school is a little different, but many, if not most, programs will admit anywhere from 10% to 20% of their applicants. However, this does vary from year to year. The number of people that you’re competing against for a spot in a PhD program in a particular year is really quite unpredictable. To help answer this question further, below are some admissions statistics from the Business PhD program at Iowa for the fall of 2007:

Accounting:  43 applicants, 6 admitted (14%)
Finance:  75 applicants, 4 admitted (5%)
Management:  51 applicants, 4 admitted (8%)
Management Science:  29 applicants, 7 admitted (24%)
Marketing:  29 applicants, 6 admitted (21%)
Economics:  178 applicants, 23 admitted (13%)

Now, don’t let these numbers discourage you. I can guarantee you that if you’ve prepared yourself well and you follow the advice that I’ve given, your chances of getting accepted substantially increase. Plus, give yourself some credit and be willing to take a risk. If being a professor is what you really want to do, then prepare yourself well and go for it. 

Do you feel that BYU-Idaho prepared you well for a PhD program?
In my honest opinion, I never would have gotten into a PhD program as early as I did if I had attended any other university (including BYU-Provo). The close proximity that I had with my professors at BYU-Idaho was one of the most crucial things to my preparation for a PhD program. As I stated earlier, a PhD program is very much like an apprenticeship. As such, you continually work closely with very educated and renowned faculty members. BYU-Idaho was great for me because I learned how to interact appropriately with faculty members long before I entered a PhD program. Be grateful for that opportunity. At many other schools, all you get to talk to are the professor’s TAs. Indeed, the BYU-Idaho faculty members are extremely student-focused, so they want to see you succeed. They have many chances to observe you because classes are typically small. Therefore, my suggestion for any prospective PhD students is to take full advantage of getting to know your professors one on one. Prove yourselves to them, and they will do anything for you.

In addition to my wonderful interactions with BYU-Idaho faculty, my undergraduate classes at BYU-Idaho were perhaps even more rigorous than the ones that are taught at Iowa. So I definitely feel that the demanding workload of my undergraduate studies prepared me for the rigors of a PhD program. I would caution you to not feel like people from other schools are smarter, more experienced, and otherwise more capable than BYU-Idaho students. That is a totally wrong and misguided assumption. To the contrary, I feel like I was just as well prepared for a PhD program as everybody else coming from schools around the world.

Finally, the most important preparation that I received at BYU-Idaho was to learn how to learn by the Spirit. As fulfilling as I find my PhD program to be, it is certainly not easy. I remember one of the professors who wrote a recommendation letter for me saying that I should be prepared to feel stupid at least once a day in my PhD program, especially during the first couple of years. Oh, how true that is. As such, I have learned more than ever before that the Holy Ghost is a teacher, and that if I include Him in my studies, that I am enabled to learn the things that I need to. Prayer has become not only a necessity in my doctoral studies, but also a tool and a key for understanding. If not for my attending BYU-Idaho, I either would have never learned this lesson, or I would have learned it once it was too late. I love BYU-Idaho, and no place could have prepared me more for what I am doing now.