In general, the market splits now into the official price for an MBA and the discounted version for gifted and talented students.
“At the moment, schools’ battle for students has become so frenzied that several prominent schools are quietly negotiating with candidates, often competing with rival offers from other MBA programs”, Poets&Quants authors Ethan Baron and Nathan Allen write. “And some second-tier institutions have quietly contacted at least one major admissions consulting firm to present a highly unusual proposition: send your most impressive clients to us, and we’ll give them scholarship funds that we’ve set aside especially for your clients”, claims the article.
The race is on for candidates with high GMAT and GPA scores that might improve a school’s standing in the rankings and for students that are expected to do well later in life, something that would reflect well on the school then.
The trend seems to be confined mainly to the US with European schools offering much less funds to candidates in comparison! INSEAD, for example, has just $3.8 million in scholarship money for about 1,000 students.
Poets&Quants has compiled estimates of the following US-schools:
Harvard – $31.5 million scholarship funds
Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business – $6.7 million scholarship funds
University of Michigan’s Ross School – $15.4 million in scholarship funds
UCLA’s Anderson School – $12.1 million in scholarship funds
Yale University’s School of Management – $6.2 million in scholarship funds
Stanford Graduate School of Business – $15.7 million in scholarship funds
Read more at Poets and Quants