Financial Aid
Guys,
Which of the top 10 MBA schools are generous with regard to aid to international applicants? I am thinking about a near 100% aid.
I understand that Columbia hasn't too much aid available but that Stanford does. Any idea of the rest?
I've heard of aid from schools but 100% is going to be incredibly rare. Especially in the top 10 schools, you will have to blow them out of the water with something special in your application. What is your profile like?
It is very rare to receive a full-ride at any top 10 school. There may be 10-15 full-tuition awards per school and you would be competing with the entire applicant pool for those. Scholarships dedicated to international students tend to be partial and many are directed toward students from a specific country (Israel, India, and Brazil are common ones).
Check out Booth's website and you will see a list of the fellowships offered in the financial aid section. Booth awards merit scholarships to some applicants at the time of admission (no additional application required). They vary in amount from 10K-30K/year. After R2 admissions named fellowships are awarded to both R1 and R2 admits. Some of these you have to apply for others you do not. Some of these fellowships go to admits who did not previously receive a merit scholarship, other fellowships replace an admitted applicant's merit scholarship. Wharton has a similar process (fellowship at time of admit that may later be replaced by a named fellowship). Hope this helps.
oops, seems like getting an mba is just gonna be a dream..... do none of the schools have aid based on need? Would the situation be better if I go down a tier (Dartmouth, Cornell, Yale etc)?
Harvard and Stanford award aid based entirely on need. I know two people who matriculated at HBS this year and they both said the financial aid was generous.
Kellogg also gives need based financial aid, but I think it's pretty paltry.
I believe that Wharton only awards merit based scholarships and fellowships. Wharton fellowships are awarded at the time of admission and range from 10K/year - 30K/year. There are full tuition awards that are handed out later.
Regardless of financial aid the first step is to just get into these schools. I would not apply to schools with solely merit based financial aid expecting to come away with a large award.
H/S/W - it's mostly need based and getting a merit scholarship is pretty rare. Why would HBS want to use money to entice you to come?
Non-H/S/W top 5-7s (K/Chi/MIT/Col) - As someone already wrote, you can expect 10-30k if they think you have the profile to get into multiple schools in the same tier and the school wants to tip the scales so that you choose it. In that case, you would be someone who has a decent chance of getting into H/S/W, but not a shoo-in. 1/2 to full tuition is rare and usually goes to people who almost certainly will manage to get into H/S/W and the schools in the next tier try to lure these applicants away.
Schools ranked 8-15 - If you have a low chance of getting into the top 5-7, then you are either a middle-of-the-road applicant for the schools in the 8-15 tier, or you have a slim chance there. In that case, don't expect scholarships. Expect 15-50k if they think you have a decent, but not 100% shot of getting into top 5-7, which means that you'll likely get multiple offers from other 8-15 schools. In that case, some schools in this tier might want to use a scholarship to lure you away from their direct competitors. You can get full tuition if your profile is so strong for these schools as to be very likely to get you at least one acceptance to a higher ranked shool.
Take a look at your profile and whichever tier is your sweet spot is the tier that is not likely to give you a big scholarship, if at all. The next tier will be likely to give you some scholarship, varying from 1/3 to full.
I don't know if this breakdown is entirely accurate. I received significant merit scholarships to W and a top 5 school and received minimal aid at another top 5. While I do think that some scholarship money is awarded to lure admits away from higher ranked and peer institutions I think a lot depends on your profile. I know plenty of "rockstars" who didn't receive a dime at schools across several tiers. I think diversity (ethnic, career background, nationality, career goals) plays a huge role in who gets fellowships. An Indian Fine Arts major who wants to go into tech entrepreneurship will sooner get money over the Indian IT engineer who wants to go into consulting even if IT engineer went to IIT, has a 780 GMAT, and worked for Google. JMO based on observations of other admitted students.
I don't disagree, but I never claimed that my breakdown is precise or that the correlation is close to 1 - it's just a rule of thumb to estimate the likelihood of getting a merit scholarship. Diversity does play a role and if you are an underrepresented profile in the applicant pool for a certain school, you stand a better chance of being given a scholarship; you still have to top most other comparable candidates though. However, that probability is much harder to estimate for any given school in a given year. The OP asked about a nearly 100% scholarship and you're most likely to get that if you apply to a number of schools for which you are an above average candidate.
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