Hello everyone,
I am really glad I found this thread, it is really important and the whole financial aid matter is not explored enough on this forum as much as it is for domestic US students.
Like many international students here, I will not apply to any school I could see myself in because of the financing options. For example, there is no reason for me to apply to Wharton if my country in western Balkans is sanctioned by OFAC on Quorum loans offered by Wharton. The only way for me to finance my MBA is through private loans and scholarship while the personal assets will be just a humble contribution. And if I cannot get aid from the schools, potential admission would not matter to me if I could not attend.
After my research I see it is doable to get these loans but not at all schools. For example, at Duke/MIT you can fully finance your MBA through loans while Columbia does not offer them to international students. I think the key before applying to any school in the USA is knowing your limits (or limits of the school). You simply cannot think the same way Americans do about attending, say, Columbia unless you come from a very wealthy family or country (wealthy countries have better financial markets and better options of getting those loans).
My goal is to find a dream school out of those that offer loans and there is nothing wrong with that. To help some people out, I created a small table about financing options at 14 schools in the US. Some of these schools are of interest to me, some of them I looked into just for my curiosity. The file is attached to this post, you will be able to see the price of the first year, availability of loans, specialization of some schools (not fully researched), and scholarship range I looked from
Aringo MBA admission consulting website.
My question for you people is this: I know that if I got into Duke I would be able to get loans for the cost of attendance. Naturally, I would prefer to get a scholarship first and to cover the rest in loans. But, is it realistic to hope for a person (not just me and my profile) to get both scholarship and loans, or it is 1) full loans or 2)partial scholarship while I cover the rest?
p.s. let's keep this topic alive!
EDIT: So a person PMed me with various questions regarding the spreadsheet I created. I realized it is not comprehensible for most people (I do not blame them), so I am editing this post by posting my reply to the person who has sent me his questions. I hope it clarifies things a little more for all of you.
Quote:
First of all, I guess I needed to provide more clarification in that post. I made the spreadsheet more for myself than for other people but I decided to share it. However, I will gladly provide you with the necessary info.
-The colors mean the following: Green means "you can go for it since you can get fully financed without any scholarship", orange means "it is doable but you will need at least some kind of scholarship because there are certain limits to how much you can borrow" while red means "you cannot finance it since you either need a US co-signor or there are other limitations."
-As I mentioned, scholarship range I got is from
Aringo MBA consulting website. That means if you get admitted your scholarship could also be significantly higher or lower. It is more of a yardstick, not a definitive scenario. Moreover, it kind of makes sense for Sloan to offer lower scholarships than most schools (although that may not be actually the case), since they guarantee financing to every student in full amount of cost of attendance (COA).
-As far as Kellog is concerned, I do not remember things all that well since I am not all that interested in applying. But I do believe that my info is correct. You should check it on their website. If it is your target school, contact the financial aid office. They could have changed financing options since 2010, such things happen especially in this kind of economy.
-Tuck, YSOM (and I think Johnson was the same scenario). It means that you can borrow up to a full tuition but not total cost of attendance (room, board and fees). Thus, if you received, say, $30K scholarship from those schools it would apply towards tuition cost only. You still have to pay for other costs from your own pocket. Do you see what I mean?
-Anderson is same as three schools above except that you can, to my understanding, receive scholarship for room&board and fees and then apply loans towards tuition. And yes, they do provide loans without co-signor, but not in the full amount of COA.
-"$$$ = Scholarship for room/board to cover the difference" means that you cannot receive scholarship for room/board, only tuition (I kind of said it already). It is just an explanation, like an asterix
-and those four schools I mentioned are my schools I will be looking at. That's all.
-"/" in the scholarship column means that I could not get any info.
Attachments
File comment: A small simple list of schools and their financial aid structure for international students. Scholarship range is based on the info I found on Aringo MBA consulting and scholarship could also be actually smaller and bigger.
MBA Schools.xlsx [11.64 KiB]
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15 Jun 2010, 12:31
