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02 Aug 2024, 07:43
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The top schools are notorious for scantily handing out scholarships. In case they do, it's a generous 10-20% cut.
Which brings me to my question, When overrepresented candidates apply to top schools with a need for a scholarship, in the real world scenario and not in the utopian world that the AdComs would like us to believe, does it damage the chances of an admit?
Here's a simple example, consider two overzealous overaccomplised Indian tech males, Hardly any noticeable differences between the two, A demands a scholarship, whereas B's deep pockets are willing to pay for his whole tuition. Clearly the AdCom would choose B. There's hardly any loss in the quality of candidacy plus an extra hundred k.
Apart from Harvard, Standford, Yale and others that have a decent amount of funding and claim to be need blind, this is regarding other top schools in the US as well as LBS, INSEAD, HEC, etc...
Which brings me to my question, When overrepresented candidates apply to top schools with a need for a scholarship, in the real world scenario and not in the utopian world that the AdComs would like us to believe, does it damage the chances of an admit?
Here's a simple example, consider two overzealous overaccomplised Indian tech males, Hardly any noticeable differences between the two, A demands a scholarship, whereas B's deep pockets are willing to pay for his whole tuition. Clearly the AdCom would choose B. There's hardly any loss in the quality of candidacy plus an extra hundred k.
Apart from Harvard, Standford, Yale and others that have a decent amount of funding and claim to be need blind, this is regarding other top schools in the US as well as LBS, INSEAD, HEC, etc...
02 Aug 2024, 13:26
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Hi Hoehenheim
That's a good but old question you are asking. There are decades of discussion about it. Lots of fear around it and often it is paralyzing if you are trying to play 3D chess with admissions, scholarships, etc. You skipped a part of the argument, so let me reconstruct it a bit - the argument says Schools worry about their yield rate (as it is included in the US News Rankings and they report it in a few places), and therefore they will try to manage yield by denying those who are unlikely to attend without a significant scholarship. Let me know if I got this incorrect.
This argument has a few assumptions:
1) Schools can read well if you and your family are affluent (which is tricky to estimate as they can see your salary but not spending; maybe you save a lot or your family has money?)
2) They can by some ways such as historical or others know that you are unlikely to attend without a scholarship
In my experience, the argument is more of an excuse by candidates who would rather blame an external factor than take ownership of the situation and their ding. Dings are hard and I completely agree that admissions is a black box. We have seen people admitted to Kellogg schools and dinged at Fuqua and Ross (affluent people). So it goes in various directions esp now after 2020.
Arguments against the theory:
P.S. The other argument that's often debated by those who are not poor is - I was too qualified and that's why I got dinged. E.g. Would a school such as UCLA Anderson admit someone who clearly is over-qualified for them and likely also applying to Stanford and HBS?
The answer to this question is much simpler and the answer is Yes, they would admit. Schools do not have the mental power to play 4D-chess. These are not mind games. You are giving them way too much credit if you think they are this clever. It is a nice compliment but things are a lot simpler. School don't know if this person is applying to a safety or a target school. You just never know and if you see a good candidates, it is stupid to let them go and not admit them. Maybe their wife/parents are in the city and this is a must-attend option for them - maybe they love the sports team or maybe they have other reasons. As an AdCom member, their job is to learn more about people and be able to read things better from people attendance of webinars, from meeting them on campus or during an MBA Fair online, from other interactions, etc and this can help (which is the reason you should do all these things and participate in them), but I heard from one schol for example that 35% of all their applicants or some large % came completely blank. An application submitted right before the deadline without any trace of the individual having any kind of a touch point with the program. Zero data and that's a large group. The reason is that people submit applications with other emails, etc, etc. Anyway, I digress.
Hope this was somewhat helpful. Please disagree if you disagree! 👍
That's a good but old question you are asking. There are decades of discussion about it. Lots of fear around it and often it is paralyzing if you are trying to play 3D chess with admissions, scholarships, etc. You skipped a part of the argument, so let me reconstruct it a bit - the argument says Schools worry about their yield rate (as it is included in the US News Rankings and they report it in a few places), and therefore they will try to manage yield by denying those who are unlikely to attend without a significant scholarship. Let me know if I got this incorrect.
This argument has a few assumptions:
1) Schools can read well if you and your family are affluent (which is tricky to estimate as they can see your salary but not spending; maybe you save a lot or your family has money?)
2) They can by some ways such as historical or others know that you are unlikely to attend without a scholarship
In my experience, the argument is more of an excuse by candidates who would rather blame an external factor than take ownership of the situation and their ding. Dings are hard and I completely agree that admissions is a black box. We have seen people admitted to Kellogg schools and dinged at Fuqua and Ross (affluent people). So it goes in various directions esp now after 2020.
Arguments against the theory:
- If you think your head spins thinking about the process, think about schools - they have a group decision to make and thousands of applicants. Splitting hairs on them first and then have to debate if the applicant joins or not. If the concern is indeed yield and ability to afford/attend, and not their qualifications, they would at minimum put that individual on the WL to gauge their interest. If the person is sticking around (getting off the WL with a scholarship is clearly a toll order, though not impossible, but definitely not something one would expect), so in that case we would be seeing lots of highly qualified but poor blocks on WL's at M7's or other programs. I don't think that's necessarily what we see and the arguments that we see from these individuals tend to be more about a ding and not WL.
- People regularly debate between M7 and T20 with $$, which means people are regularly admitted. M7's know they lose schools to T20's and that's just part of life. I can tell you that many affluent people are also as likely to take a scholarship option than borrow a bunch of money. I feel it has to do more with your background and thinking rather than net worth. From what I have observed and heard, if you are a competitive candidate, they will admit you because tons of people have been borrowing money and paying full tuition from all places in the world (I have heard some quips which may or not be true for applicants from Africa whose US Student visa tends to depend on getting a scholarship and often not getting one it is a non-starter) but still I have seen plenty of Nigerians admitted without $$
- Schools do want diversity. Low income is one of those sides and they do try to offset some of the costs to make the opportunity easier to achieve but their budgets are different and they don't have need-based scholarships outside of HBS and Stanford really, so it is all about merit.
- Finally, schools such as LBS and INSEAD do not report or disclose almost any information about thier classes, so they don't care about Yield really... as that is purely a US-news metric, so this would not be a consideration for them
P.S. The other argument that's often debated by those who are not poor is - I was too qualified and that's why I got dinged. E.g. Would a school such as UCLA Anderson admit someone who clearly is over-qualified for them and likely also applying to Stanford and HBS?
The answer to this question is much simpler and the answer is Yes, they would admit. Schools do not have the mental power to play 4D-chess. These are not mind games. You are giving them way too much credit if you think they are this clever. It is a nice compliment but things are a lot simpler. School don't know if this person is applying to a safety or a target school. You just never know and if you see a good candidates, it is stupid to let them go and not admit them. Maybe their wife/parents are in the city and this is a must-attend option for them - maybe they love the sports team or maybe they have other reasons. As an AdCom member, their job is to learn more about people and be able to read things better from people attendance of webinars, from meeting them on campus or during an MBA Fair online, from other interactions, etc and this can help (which is the reason you should do all these things and participate in them), but I heard from one schol for example that 35% of all their applicants or some large % came completely blank. An application submitted right before the deadline without any trace of the individual having any kind of a touch point with the program. Zero data and that's a large group. The reason is that people submit applications with other emails, etc, etc. Anyway, I digress.
Hope this was somewhat helpful. Please disagree if you disagree! 👍
02 Aug 2024, 13:54
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A most fair and comprehensive assessment. I agree the most with the point that schools can never know, and they just admit the talent that they find to be the best fit. This is easily proven by various instances of people gaining admits and scholarships across different b-schools of various standings.
After looking it up, I realised that Scholarship applications are invisible to the AdComs before the decision to admit has been made.
I believe in a hurry to make an argument, I regretably failed to highlight the crux of my question.
I tried to set the tone by taking the example of top US Schools that are need blind. They are well funded and can afford it.
I will be applying to top US, UK and French MiM programs this intake. MiM, being less competitive than the MBA, would surely have a lower funding from the department, paired with the fact that EU schools have a hard time handing out scholarships, I was just of the view that when I do apply to these schools, would ticking the scholarship box hurt my chances...
This question arose after the Application Walkthrough, and as the process followed by the EU AdComs are less represented, I thought I'd give it a try by asking. I am trying to figure out what exactly is it that can make my application stand out to LBS,INSEAD,HEC and not miss anything.
However, after reading the entirety of your response twice, my issue has been resolved.
After looking it up, I realised that Scholarship applications are invisible to the AdComs before the decision to admit has been made.
I believe in a hurry to make an argument, I regretably failed to highlight the crux of my question.
I tried to set the tone by taking the example of top US Schools that are need blind. They are well funded and can afford it.
I will be applying to top US, UK and French MiM programs this intake. MiM, being less competitive than the MBA, would surely have a lower funding from the department, paired with the fact that EU schools have a hard time handing out scholarships, I was just of the view that when I do apply to these schools, would ticking the scholarship box hurt my chances...
This question arose after the Application Walkthrough, and as the process followed by the EU AdComs are less represented, I thought I'd give it a try by asking. I am trying to figure out what exactly is it that can make my application stand out to LBS,INSEAD,HEC and not miss anything.
However, after reading the entirety of your response twice, my issue has been resolved.
