Ph.D. in Finance

Ph.D. Advisor

John Kensinger

The University of North Texas College of Business Ph.D. in Business Administration, specializing in Finance, focuses the College's Ph.D. experience to include teaching training and research training that is appropriate for the field of Finance. You can read more about the details of the College program in the Handbook. The application for admission can be downloaded from the Admission Information page or here (in Word document format).

Students specializing in Finance shall use CoB Track II courses plus the rest of courses outlined below as their degree plan:

College of Business Requirements

Finance Ph.D. students have 24 credit hours of courses to be taken with their peers in other College of Business degrees

Finance Ph.D. Courses

In addition, Finance Ph.D. students have 15 hours of Finance Ph.D. courses:

Ph.D. Courses Requiring Department Approval

Finally, Finance Ph.D. students will choose 6 credit hours from among the following courses (Need Department Approval):

At the end of the appropriate coursework, Finance Ph.D. students will take minor field comprehensive exams as well as written and oral Finance comprehensive exams prior to entering beginning dissertation work. We offer written Finance comprehensive examinations twice per year. They last for eight hours on Wednesday and eight hours on Thursday of the week that contains Feb 21 or September 1. The oral examination is scheduled 14-21 days after the written examination is administered. The oral examination shall be a student presentation of an empirical extension of a recent top finance journal article as well as questions from the written comprehensive exam. Consequently, students should be ready to defend a dissertation proposal as early as their sixth long semester in the program, depending on their performance on course work and written and oral comprehensive exams.

We anticipate that students will be trained for careers in teaching and research in Finance during the degree program. In particular:

  1. Finance Ph.D. students will gain experience in presenting research to their peers and will gain experience in our classrooms.
    • College level seminars will require independent research and presentations to peers
    • We expect every student to gain teaching experience as a teaching fellow (TF) during the Ph.D. program, but they must be qualified in their discipline and have taken the College-Level Teaching Seminar
  2. Most students should finish coursework in two and a half calendar years, after deficiency courses have been satisfied. This assumes that students will have seven semesters of coursework and includes attending seminars in the 10-week summer session. We anticipate offering the College-level seminars in the summers (some exclusively in the summer).
    • Students should plan to attend full-time during the coursework phase and for the one calendar year following coursework. The regular school year (long semesters) will be used for doctoral level seminars and tools classes. Every student will be evaluated at six month intervals to determine if they are making sufficient progress toward their degree by the entire Ph.D. Policy Committee in the Finance department.

Prerequisites

(All prerequisite coursework should be completed prior to enrolling in the Finance Ph.D. program). Deficiency coursework may be completed at UNT, but formal admission into the Ph.D. program is every two years because of the planned sequence of College Ph.D. classes. Our university and college policies let students take up to 12 hours of classes without being enrolled in a degree program.

  1. All students are expected to have an MBA-level knowledge in their specialty prior to enrolling in any doctoral-level seminar course:
    • Students without a Master's degree in their discipline are expected to enroll in the Master's curriculum until they qualify to take doctoral courses
  2. Finance Ph.D. students should have had Calculus I, II, Linear Algebra, and 3 credit hours of a college-level programming class.
  3. Finance Ph.D. students should have a reasonable GMAT combined score plus have reasonable individual GMAT verbal and GMAT quantitative score. If you don't have very high scores, the faculty will review your application for evidence that the GMAT scores don't properly measure your ability to succeed in a Ph.D. program. Please refer the CoB Ph.D. Student Handbook to see the Ph.D. admission formula for the College of Business. Likewise, if you don't meet the current admission formula (combination of GPA and GMAT combined score), the departmental faculty reviews your application for convincing evidence that you would be successful in the Ph.D. program. We do not automatically reject anyone on the basis of a standardized test score, instead we use a holistic review of the candidate to determine if they will likely be successful in the Ph.D. program (e.g., a lower GPA from a highly quantitative M.S./MBA program at a first-rate research university might be a better indicator of success than a high GPA from an accredited, but non-quantitative M.S./MBA program. Please keep in mind that the process is competitive and we limit the number of admissions.

Other Sources of Information about the Ph.D. Program

  1. UNT College of Business Advising Staff MBA/MS Page
  2. UNT Graduate Catalog FIREL Graduate Course Descriptions and Prerequisites
  3. FIREL Undergraduate Course Descriptions and Prerequisites
  4. General Link to UNT Catalogs

Finance Links For Ph.D. Students

  1. College of William and Mary 1999 Frank Batten Young Scholars Conference
  2. Ph.D. Advice from Ohio State University Finance Dept.
  3. Ph.D. Student Information gathered by Daigler
  4. Some general advice from Florida Atlantic University