BYU Pre-Doctoral Student Organization: This is an organization that Dr. Keith Vorkink at BYU advised for so many years. He put a lot of helpful information on the website to help students get into a top finance PhD program. Even though the sources are made for BYU students, this will be helpful source for non-BYU students as well.
DOCNET: This is a website of Consortium of Business Doctoral Programs, which promote doctoral education in business field throughout the world. The have recruiting events at many locations, which consist of panel discussion and booths. The recruiter of many schools come, and it is a good chance for you to drop off your name (some times resume). Also through these events, many schools give away code that wave your application fee (which is normally around $100 per school).
Arizona State University Finance Rannking: You can compose ranking based on the numbers of publications in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. You can change the range from Top 25 to Top 50, Top 100 or All to see the poblication ranking. Also, you can change the year range for the publication numbers.
The UTD Top 100 Business School Research Ranking: This is another site that generate rankings of universities based on publications. In this site, you can choose different journals (for finance, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies). The socre is calculated based on not only number of publications, but weighted by the number of authors for each publication (if one article has 3 authors, the score assigned to each school of each author is 1/3).
THE GRADCAFE: This site is made for the applicants to volunterlly share their admission information (acceptances, rejections, interviews, etc.). While this may make you anxious to see if you get an interview or not, this helps you identify if you less likely to have an interview from certain school or not as admission process at each school progresses.
PhD Stipends: This is the website where people report their stipend. There are not a lot of information for finance, but you can get some ideas if you look up business, management or the other fields in business schools.
The American Finance Association: This is the association publishes the Journal of Finance, and organizes the biggest finance conference once a year, where top schools conduct recruiting interviews. Even though it costs money to attend, it is a great conference to attend if you have a chance. The conference is normally held in the first or second week of January each year.
The Financial Management Association: This is the association publishes the Financial Management, and organizes the second biggest finance conference once a year, where many schools conduct recruiting interviews. Even though it costs money to attend, it is a great conference to attend if you have a chance. The conference is normally held in October each year.
Western Finance Association: This is a smaller conference compare to AFA or FMA, but still a nice, big conference to attend. All students can register and attend for free if you register it early enough (normally by mid May). It is a great conference to attend to understnad current topics in finance and even network.
Accounting Coding Camp: The price is high ($1,500 for one year subscription), but if you are one of those who needs nice platform to learn statistical/code software, this will give you a nice platform. These three professors have course created for Python, SAS and STATA. Python is obviously free. You probably do not need to pay for SAS if you are currently at a school. STATA is something you need to pay a bit of money. If you want to learn but you do not have an access to SAS right now, it is not too late for you to start in your first year in the program.
Python Programming for Economics and Finance: This is a free resource to learn Python. The resource seems very good and specific for researchers in the field of Economics and Finance.
Todd A. Gormeley's Home Page: Dr. Gormeley is a professor at Washington University at St. Louis. He teaches empirical methods in corporate finance course for his PhD students. He has great sets of slides to build a foundamental for empirical corporate finance study. If you are interested in corporate finance, I would highly recommend to study through these slides before you start your program.