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Question

How does one go about finding scholarships for MBA programs? Are there scholarships for people in certain sectors or who plan to go to certain schools? Are there scholarships for high GMAT scores?

Note: I'm a white Jewish man working in the private sector, so I'm afraid that there will be no scholarships available.

fxMBAconsulting · Answer

Generally speaking, each school has a couple of PARTIAL scholarships offered by the school or by one of the employers who recruit at the school. The lower ranked a school is, the more it offers scholarships to students. So if you target a top 20-10 school, you'll have a better chance of getting some tuition reduction from the school than if you target a 1-10 school.

You might want to check and see if there are any religious or community groups that you belong to that offer scholarships for graduate degrees (not just MBAs). I know some kids in Europe are able to get regionally funded scholarships - I'm not sure where you live but check with your local government.

As a rule of thumb though the expectation is that an MBA is going to SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE your personal income and so the expectation is that you should take on the cost of the program because you're going to benefit from it afterwards. This is different than doing say a masters in social work - you're probably not going to make that much money after you graduate BUT your work will benefit the community - so a scholarship is MERITED.

dtse86 · Answer

Some schools also have loan forgiveness to certain individuals that choose to work in the public sector or at a non-profit post-MBA.

That may be something to consider or look into if that's your desired career path.

jz4analytics · Answer

Do you know which of the top 20 programs offer some type of loan forgiveness for social enterprise/nonprofit?

dtse86 · Answer

I believe most of the top 20 schools have loan forgiveness programs. I'm not too sure on the specifics, however here's a list of programs I've quickly identified that have a program:
  HBS  Stanford GSB  Kellogg  CBS  Tuck  Fuqua  Stern  Haas  Yale SOM  Wharton

From what I can tell, some require that you apply for loan forgiveness, but like I said I'm not too familiar with all of the details for each program.

I'd suggest that if that's something you're interested in, that you ask the adcom or some current students when you start to do your research for specific schools to apply.

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