Undergraduate and Masters Advising

Dr. Rao serves as the primary advisor on 2-3 student theses per academic year in the undergraduate and masters programs at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.  Before approaching Dr. Rao about advising your thesis, please keep in mind the following:

  • Dr. Rao will only advise students who agree to work on their thesis for a minimum of 8 months.  The Frankfurt School officially allots 2 months for thesis work, but Dr. Rao believes this is amount of time is grossly insufficient.  Dr. Rao’s students will commit a similar number of hands-on working hours to students who complete their projects over a shorter time period.  But, this work will be spread out over a longer period of time to decrease physical and mental strain and to allow for more passive introspection on the thesis topic.
  • Students who work with Dr. Rao are strictly prohibited from using any commercially-available generative LLM tools (e.g., ChatGPT) in their work on the thesis project.
  • Students should expect their thesis to take the form of a literature review, except under extremely limited circumstances.
  • Students are required to read and annotate a printed copy of Umberto Eco’s (2015) book, How to Write a Thesis, before beginning work on their thesis project.
  • The goal of the thesis project will be to produce a scholarly manuscript that merits publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal.  Publication will likely require an additional 8-10 months of work on the manuscript following graduation.  If the student pursues publication, Dr. Rao will directly support manuscript development post-graduation, taking second authorship where appropriate.

Dr. Rao does not advise any undergraduate or masters students enrolled in programs outside the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.

PhD Advising

Faculty do not directly admit students to the PhD program at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.  Students must apply directly to the FS PhD program.  Applications are evaluated by an internal committee (of which Dr. Rao is not a member), and Dr. Rao has no influence over that process.  Only after admission to the FS PhD program may students approach Dr. Rao about their research interests to determine whether a research partnership between the student and Dr. Rao would be appropriate.

Dr. Rao does not advise any PhD students enrolled in programs outside the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.  However, Dr. Rao may serve as an external committee member in limited cases where the student’s advisor at their home institution is a close colleague or research collaborator of Dr. Rao.  In this case, the student should approach Dr. Rao through their advisor (not directly).