{"id":44013,"date":"2018-11-15T06:25:26","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T13:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/another-win-for-stanford-gsb-what-stanfords-new-financial-aid-system-means-for-mbas\/"},"modified":"2018-11-15T06:25:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T13:25:26","slug":"another-win-for-stanford-gsb-what-stanfords-new-financial-aid-system-means-for-mbas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/another-win-for-stanford-gsb-what-stanfords-new-financial-aid-system-means-for-mbas\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Win for Stanford GSB: What Stanford\u2019s new Financial Aid System Means for MBAs"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a lot to celebrate this month if you\u2019re part of the Stanford GSB<\/a> community (or hope to be).<\/h2>\n

This includes the school\u2019s latest rankings triumphs \u2013 including the number 1 slot in the revamped Businessweek Ranking of Best B-Schools as well as yesterday\u2019s Fortuna Ranking of MBA Rankings<\/a>. But as a Stanford GSB alum, I\u2019m also highly gratified to see the roll out Stanford GBS\u2019s new Financial Aid System.<\/p>\n

Announced on November 5th<\/sup>by Dean Jonathan Levin, the new Financial Aid System is good news for prospective MBA students who want assurance they have a fair shot at financial aid. Last year\u2019s highly publicized data breach, which exposed the troubling disconnect between policy and practice in awarding financial aid, leveled a critical challenge \u2013 and opportunity \u2013 at my alma mater. Not only was GSB\u2019s integrity in question, but its initial response was highly scrutinized, and the aftermath included the public dismissal of the GSB\u2019s Chief Digital Officer.<\/p>\n

From an alumni perspective, I think Levin and his team have offered a great response. The official Announcement of the New Financial Aid System<\/a> is also undersigned by Kirsten Moss, who took on the role of Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid only 16 months ago. It\u2019s a big win for Moss, who earns praise from Levin for leading the multi-stakeholder initiative, and it\u2019s arguably her first major impact on the program. Levin also provides a succinct retrospective on the Historical Look at Financial Aid<\/a>, \u00a0which lifts up three primary lessons learned from the school\u2019s review of its historical process within the context of its new Financial Aid Initiative.<\/p>\n

In doing so, GSB offers unprecedented transparency of a public learning process, which involved a lot of people, set clear objectives, and delivered guiding principles \u2013 excellence, access and fairness \u2013 to establish its financial aid initiative. This has also brought to the fore how complicated, opaque and burdensome the process of applying for aid has felt for too many GSB students. As a result, the GSB is making a big effort to redesign the process to make it more transparent, fair and easy on candidates.<\/p>\n

The GSB\u2019s effort to increase transparency and fairness is meaningful against the growing concern and awareness of the \u201copaqueness\u201d of these processes elsewhere (most notably the lawsuit against Harvard University by Students for Fair Admissions<\/a> over discriminatory undergrad admissions practices).<\/p>\n

In sum, after considering other possible models for awarding aid, Stanford GSB elected to proceed with awarding its fellowships based solely on financial need. In doing so, it\u2019s recalibrated how it assesses need, as well as the explicit potential for addressing \u201cedge cases\u201d when exceptional circumstances arise.<\/p>\n

In keeping within a need-based financial aid model, GSB sends a strong signal of its confidence that it won\u2019t lose candidates to its elite peer programs and continue to attract and retain top talent. In light of Stanford GSB\u2019s latest rankings glory, its timing in staking this claim couldn\u2019t be better.<\/p>\n

Heidi Hillis<\/a> is an Expert Coach at Fortuna Admissions<\/a>\u00a0and former alumni Admissions Interviewer at Stanford GSB. Fortuna is\u00a0composed of former admissions directors and business school insiders from 13 of the top 15 business schools.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a lot to celebrate this month if you\u2019re part of the Stanford GSB community (or hope to be). This includes the school\u2019s latest rankings triumphs \u2013 including the number…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1831,775,243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mba","category-fortuna-admissions","category-admission-consultants","category-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}