Just want to share some experience that I had with PhD applications.

I finally got an offer from Columbia for Accounting PhD in fall 2011.

Applied for 14 Universities in the US.
Stanford
USC
Harvard
UC Berkeley
Wisconsin
U Pennsylvania
Cornell
MIT
Minnesota
Columbia
Yale
Illinois
UCLA
NYU

Columbia offer
In early Feb, got an Offer from Columbia Business School with no interview, Andrew just Skyped with me and gave me the informal offer.

Interview with Wisconsin
I got the offer from Columbia 2 hours before my Wisconsin interview, so I really didn't perform very well in the

Wisconsin interview.
Therefore I only got onto the waiting list!

The interview with Minnesota started late Feb and I got the offer from Minnesota in early March.
I had a very very long interview (ard 1hr and 40min) with Prof Zhaoyang Gu, he was very nice and told me

about the advantage of Minnesota over Columbia.
It was actually a very hard decision between Minnesota and Columbia.
But in the end with the help of my University Professor, I decided to go to Columbia.

Illinois rejected me in January, which was a very very big suprise.

Background
Bachelor of Commerce from Australia, I only had a business major and I did not have a Master degree.
I got an average GMAT and GPA, also got a very bad AWA score.