Hello All,

Hope everyone is getting excited about offers and prospective offers from business schools. I am from Houston, TX and received an offer from Tepper (after Round 1). However, I applied for Rice MBA program in R2 and was interviewed 2 weeks ago. My dilemma is should I use the offer from Tepper as a leverage to send an email to Rice Adcoms to request for a decision on my application. I believe that based on my application (good WE) and my interview, I can get an offer. I received only 40K in scholarships from Tepper and am anticipating higher amounts from Rice.
Please let me know if sending an email to Rice Adcom will be viewed as desperate measures. The deadline to make the deposit for Tepper is looming.

Thank you for your inputs.

GMATClub member

Congrats on your admits!

The reason there is a deposit and the reason the deadline is blooming, is a calculated strategy by mba programs. My guess is that you have suspected it and the reason they have their timelines it’s to push you to commit or to make a decision usually before you can hear from another business school. There’s not much motivation for schools to give you flexibility and choice. I have not heard of schools hiring decisions unless it is a rolling admission system. Otherwise, it would not be fair for the other applicants who would be getting their decisions much later.

PS. There is definitely no perception of desperation if you do contact them. You could’ve worded very nicely and they would actually appreciate hearing from you. However, you should consider all aspects of your actions. And in some sense, you would be signaling to arise that you’re willing to forgo admission and the scholarship at Tepper. They may match your offer and perhaps bump it only slightly knowing that you are already able and willing and prefer to attend there. It may make sense for them to make the first offer.

Since the chances of hearing early from Rice are pretty slim, I think you should expect to be paying a deposit at Tepper. Unless you want to gamble and let it lapse. You can still use your admit letter to negotiate a scholarship but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are one of those guys who bought GameStop, Bitcoin and Tesla years ago and hung onto it. 😬

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Thank you so much for your detailed response. It does make sense to deposit or else the offer will lapse. The other option would be to wait for Rice offer after my deposit payment at Tepper. Appreciate your reply.

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Most people end up depositing for the round one offers while the wait for the round two. It’s a bit of a necessary evil. This makes some believe that it is better to apply during just one round but it’s actually isn’t and it’s less risky and more advantageous to stretch it out into multiple rounds. In part, because people cannot resist not applying in the second round 😂

Tepper is a great offer. It’s a strong national brand. Obviously you have your mind set on Houston so that makes sense not to move away but there is value in options. If anything 2020 has taught us, it’s good to have options.

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Actually I am tilted towards Tepper but scholarship is an issue. My plan was to get an offer with high scholarship from Rice to use that as a leverage to negotiate scholarship amount at Tepper. My understand is if I make a deposit at Tepper, I can no longer negotiate any more scholarship.

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I believe Businessconquerer has done some research on negotiating for a scholarship. Do you have any input here Businessconquerer ?
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LOL. You want to rush Rice to get a scholarship that you can leverage then to rush Tepper to give you a bigger scholarship?


P.S. you can reach out after the fact and reconsider but yes, you would have a bit less leverage but not that much less, about deposit-worth less
https://gmatclub.com/forum/negotiating- ... 12949.html
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Thanks a lot.

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I would advise against such a move!
If you're set on Tepper and are only contemplating this to leverage the scholarship, then I don't think you've anything to lose here.
But, if you can opt for Rice based on the amount of scholarship they offer, then I'd say it's much better to wait things out.
Also, as bb said, you can influence Rice's decision if you show your cards right away!

Also, not sure how it works for Tepper specifically, but schools do negotiate even after you pay the deposit.
Last year, I was able to negotiate my scholarship at one of the schools months after paying the deposit.
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Thank you so much. I guess I will wait for the final decision from Rice. I will have to pay non-refundable deposit and hopefully can leverage better scholarship amounts after my offer from Rice. Appreciate your thoughts.

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Good luck!
Sorry we did not have better news. Hopefully Rice comes through!

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