For some, deciding which marketing PhD programs to apply to can be one of the most daunting parts of the whole PhD application process. It isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be a major obstacle either.
You can select schools a few different ways.
The least productive way would be to look at the list of all possible marketing PhD programs and pick by some arbitrary metric (you’ve heard of the school, it’s close to home, good football team, nice weather, party school, etc). I’d like to think that most PhD hopefuls are a little more discriminate than this. However, I do know a lot of students who do their PhD work where they got their master’s or MBA because they already have relationships with many of the faculty. I can’t say anything bad about this, if there’s a good research fit.
An equally shaky methodology that I’ve seen PhD applicants use is rankings. There are no real “rankings” of marketing PhD programs the way that there are for undergraduate or MBA programs (just look at how small the sample sizes are). However, UT-Dallas has created a fantastic resource: school rankings by business research output. You can view rankings narrowed down to the big 4 marketing journals and get an idea of marketing department productivity that way. A more productive department is likely to provide good role models to PhD students who want to learn how to publish in major journals. But this doesn’t mean that you should just go out and apply to the top 10 programs.
Targeting By Research Interest
By the time you decide to apply to a marketing PhD program, you’ll be much better off if you have an area of research interest already established. It doesn’t have to be very specific, and schools know that interests have a tendency to change, but there’s no better way to identify a school set than by starting with a particular research area. If you’re drawing a blank here, check out the statement of purpose section.
With a research or topical area in mind, you’re prepared to find schools with a really good fit. A solid place to start is by talking to any of your recommenders who are active marketing faculty or other recent assistant professors who have just come out of a PhD program, even if you don’t know them very well. They should be able to point you to programs and specific researchers based on your interests and your background.
If you are interested in publishing in the top marketing journals, you should probably look to see which professors you may want to work with who are currently publishing in top marketing journals within your area of interest. I found several schools just by chasing down papers and cited sources and tracing them back to schools and professors. You may find that the list of schools that publishes in top journals may not actually be that long. Take a look at school websites to see if there are other professors at these schools that you can add to your list of potential “professors of interest” who you’d enjoy working with. The best case scenario is that you end up with a list of 10-20 schools with each school having multiple professors that you’d be interested in researching with. It doesn’t always work out that way, but one can hope.
Take your list of schools/professors back to a professor you have a relationship with and get his or her feedback. They may have added details about particular programs or professors that you wouldn’t be able to learn otherwise and can tell you whether your targets are realistic for your profile. They may have friendships with particular professors on your list and would be willing to make an introduction for you.
A Word About Match, Stretch, and Safety
When it comes to selecting PhD programs to apply to, a common approach is to apply to a handful of match schools (schools where the average admitted student has about your same profile) as well as a few “stretch” schools and a few “safety” schools.
When the admissions process is all said and done, you’ll realize that there is no such thing as a safety school. Applicants get into highly ranked schools while being rejected by lower ranked schools all the time. It’s all about fit and you should plan accordingly. Only apply to schools that you can actually see yourself happily attending, should that school be your only acceptance.
Once you’ve got your final list of schools, it’s time to start gathering information on deadlines and other details.
*I procrastinated because of anxiety over choosing schools. Eventually, I buckled down and used a very simple heuristic. Since I’m interested in social media and interactive/digital marketing, I wanted to work with professors whose research had some overlap in those areas. I made a list of all the professors who had “A” publications about social media. I also took a couple of days and looked at every PhD program website and wrote down any school where there were at least 2 professors who listed interests in digital marketing/social networks. There were less than 20 schools that fit the basic criteria. I dropped some on the advice of a professor, others on the basis of fit or realism. I ended up with a list of 7 that I applied to. If I were to do it over, I would also look at the Journal of Interactive Marketing and identify professors and research areas that way.