Business school alumni who funded their MBA with scholarship money urge cost-conscious MBA hopefuls to apply for as many scholarships as possible.
C. Adam Callery, a Chicago-based professor and businessman who holds an MBA degree and an education doctorate and attended business school on a free ride, says prospective MBA students who fail to apply for eligible scholarships are making a mistake.
“I think in many cases people walk away from money,” says Callery, an MBA alumnus of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. “They won’t even try to write for the scholarship.” According to Callery, students sometimes fear rejection so much that they don’t apply for scholarships they could potentially win. “They don’t believe they’re worthy,” he says.
[Read: Maximize Odds of Earning a Full Ride to Business School.]
Callery encourages MBA hopefuls to apply for scholarships like the one he used to pay for business school. In the 1980s, Callery received a full-tuition MBA fellowship from The Consortium, a national organization that promotes the advancement of minorities in business. That fellowship still exists today, and can be used to fully pay for an MBA degree at top business schools which are affiliated with The Consortium, such as the Yale School of Management and the University of California–Berkeley Haas School of Business.
To increase your odds of being selected for a generous scholarship or fellowship, Callery also advises submitting polished application materials. Officials scrutinize all the written materials an MBA applicant provides to determine if that person is worthy of an interview, he says.
“All they have is your writing,” Callery warns. “If you’re not answering the question properly, meaning you’re not getting to the point of the question, that’s going to hurt you. If your punctuation is poor, if your grammar is poor, if there are typos in there, they’re never going to get to the rest of the application to see that you’re a great person.”
It’s also important to tout your accomplishments, Callery says. He notes that some students are uncomfortable with the idea of bragging and sell themselves short when they apply for a scholarship. “Humility gets in the way, where people will not be specific enough about the accomplishments that they made in their community,” he says.
Scholarship applicants should highlight any awards they’ve received to increase their chances of securing a scholarship, he says.
With that in mind, here are four types of MBA scholarships that Callery and other business school experts advise MBA hopefuls consider.
National scholarships and fellowships. Some national scholarship and fellowship programs do not obligate the recipient to attend a specific school. For instance, the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans will provide up to $90,000 awards to subsidize two years of graduate study at any college or university for students who are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Some national scholarship programs involve collaborations between nonprofit organizations and multiple B-schools, so applicants who are interested in those scholarships would need to apply to one of the B-schools participating in these scholarship programs.
For instance, the Forté Foundation — a national nonprofit organization that encourages women to apply to MBA programs and excel in business — offers a fellowship program in conjunction with numerous sponsor business schools. In order to be considered for selection as a Forté Fellow, an MBA applicant must first apply to a Forté sponsor school; then, that school determines whether to offer the applicant a Forté fellowship. Beneficiaries of the Forté Fellows Program have collectively received more than $142 million since the program’s inception.
Similarly, Military MBA — an organization that helps connect talented veterans who want MBA degrees with top business schools — offers a merit scholarship for MBA applicants with military experience in partnership with various business schools throughout the U.S. Any scholarship awarded through this program must be used at one of the Military MBA member schools. To be considered for this scholarship, an MBA hopeful must provide Military MBA official transcripts and two letters of recommendation, and fill out an online form that includes several essay questions.
[Read: 6 Options to Cut the Cost of an MBA.]
There are also some national scholarships for which anyone could be eligible, assuming he or she has compelling credentials. The international career and education network QS, for example, offers numerous scholarship opportunities to graduate school applicants who attend one of its admissions-related events, like the QS World MBA Tour, and complete its applicant survey. QS offers a $10,000 leadership scholarship, which is given to one individual who writes a compelling essay on leadership.
University scholarships available to all prospective grad students. MBA applicants often don’t realize that they are eligible for university-wide graduate school scholarships, says Ari Chasnoff, a spokesperson for Knight-Hennessy Scholars program at Stanford University in California.
The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program fully funds up to three years of graduate study at Stanford. To qualify, an MBA applicant would not only need to complete the MBA application for Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, but also would need to file a separate Knight-Hennessy scholarship application. Step-by-step instructions on how to apply for the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program are available on the “application requirements” section of the program’s website.
Chasnoff says that MBA applicants should check whether the B-schools they are interested in are affiliated with universities that offer general graduate student scholarships.
Full-tuition MBA scholarships offered by specific B-schools. Experts say there are many b-schools that offer full-tuition MBA scholarships to attract talented prospective students.
Monica Moody Moore, the dean of graduate admissions at Babson College in Massachusetts, says that in 2019 her school plans to give up to 20 more full-tuition MBA scholarships than it has given in the past to celebrate the college’s centennial anniversary.
Moore, who holds a doctorate, says that one way MBA hopefuls can boost their chances of securing a school-specific MBA scholarship is by demonstrating a strong fit with the school that offers the award. For example, because Babson College’s Olin Graduate School of Business has a culture that emphasizes entrepreneurship, it tends to award scholarships to students who have demonstrated a talent for innovation, she says.
Small scholarships that can be used together to fully fund an MBA. Callery says there is tremendous value in adding up small MBA scholarships, recalling an international MBA student he knew at the University of North Carolina who was awarded enough small scholarships that there was money left over to pay for recreational travel. He stresses that combining multiple scholarships can occasionally result in just as much money as a full scholarship would.
[Read: How MBA Applicants With Military Backgrounds Can Fund Their Education.]
It’s best for MBA hopefuls to apply for both large and small scholarships, because large scholarships tend to be exceptionally competitive, while small scholarships are easier to get, Moore says.
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Consider Applying for These 4 Types of MBA Scholarships originally appeared on usnews.com
