Overview
Admissions and Performance
The Doctoral Program in Marketing selects an average of two students each year from an impressive pool of applicants. The GMAT scores of students admitted in the last ten years average over 700. Despite the relatively small size of our program, our students have won competitive Stern School awards in seven of the last nine years: the Herman E. Kroos Award for the best dissertation, and the Taggert, Nichols, and Nadler Fellowships. They have also received national honors, such as the Richard D. Irwin Doctoral Fellowship and invitations to the Albert Haring Symposium and the Doctoral Internationalization Consortium. Our students complete their studies expeditiously. Those who entered in the last 10 years defended their dissertations an average of 4.5 years later. Most of our students complete their PhD in 5 years.Advising and Evaluation
When they enter the program, students choose faculty advisors who remain in close contact with them throughout their time in the Program. These advisors often change as students' research interests become more clearly defined. The Marketing Department has a Doctoral Committee that meets regularly to evaluate student progress, advise the Coordinator on admissions decisions, consider policy changes, etc. Each year students prepare a Progress Report and Plan which is the basis of an annual evaluation and feedback process involving advisors, faculty for whom students work by doing Research Practica, and the Marketing Doctoral Committee. We have found this process a valuable way to provide our students with guidance when it is most useful.Research and Interaction with Faculty
Our students are actively involved in research from the time they enter the Program and have usually submitted a paper to a refereed publication by the end of their second year. Significant interaction and collaboration with the faculty is a key to this productivity. Through Research Practica, classes, departmental seminars, summer Independent Research Projects, dissertation work, and informal interactions with faculty, research projects are born and transformed into publications. Students are expected to use their initiative and make substantial contributions through both their independent and co-authored work.Teaching
Our students are helped to become excellent teachers. They take teaching seminars, sit in on undergraduate and MBA classes, and participate in the departmental Partners in Pedagogy program in which they team up with members of the faculty to work on course materials and audit each other's classes. Our students typically serve as Teaching Assistants and then teach an undergraduate marketing course in their fourth year. Since 1994, a high percentage of Marketing Department Ph.D. students who taught won a Stern Outstanding Teaching Award.Quality and Commitment
The two factors that are most important to the success of our Doctoral Program are the quality of the students we admit and the commitment of our faculty to their development. We are very proud of our program, the students we produce, and the stature our program has attained in the academic marketing community.Faculty/Student Collaboration
88% of our tenure track faculty members have had close involvement with Ph.D. students in the last five years through one or more of the following: co-authorship of an article, advising, teaching a Ph.D. seminar, or serving on a dissertation or comprehensive exam committee.In the last five years, collaboration between our doctoral students and faculty while they were in the Program has produced more than 10 articles in refereed publications, including such journals as the Journal of Consumer Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, and Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Despite the relatively small size of our program, currently more than 25 other projects that were initiated by faculty/student co-authors (some of whom have since graduated) are either in progress or in review at leading journals.