Top Ten Schools In MBA Scholarships

On Harvard Business School's sprawling campus

On Harvard Business School’s sprawling campus

A veritable deluge of money is raining down on MBA students, but never before this year had the downpour been quantified. The numbers are staggering. Take this one: the 10 schools that spend the most on MBA scholarships are giving students more than $150 million per year.

Because of the extremely competitive environment in which business schools operate and squabble over students, many institutions are reluctant to make public the details of their scholarship spending. A few are willing to hand over the information. Some publicize limited data. Others strive to keep all scholarship spending numbers top secret.

Until Poets&Quants this year published a groundbreaking series on MBA scholarships, featuring a detailed breakdown of scholarship spending by the nation’s top 25 business schools, there was no single place to go to find out who’s spending how much on scholarships, how many students are benefiting, and how much money students are receiving.

A BRAND NEW RESOURCE FOR MBA APPLICANTS

In an exhaustive three-month investigation, Poets&Quants sifted through publicly available data, cajoled business school officials into coughing up historically unreleased data points, and obtained information from business school insiders to produce a comprehensive scholarship-spending list that allows MBA applicants and students to measure schools’ largesse one against another, to calculate their chances of obtaining scholarships, to get a handle on what support might accompany an admission offer from a particular school, and to see which schools are digging deepest to enroll the best candidates.

In the seven-part Poets&Quants scholarship series, we detail the all-out war among B-schools over students. We reveal the tactics that work – and those that backfire miserably – during negotiations over scholarship funding. We describe trends in scholarship spending, and highlight the categories of applicants who have the best chances for receiving money. And we show, through a profile of a Harvard Business School MBA who rose from poverty to bio-science entrepreneurship, the power of a scholarship to transform a life. Links to the series are below.

TOP TEN BUSINESS SCHOOLS FOR MBA SCHOLARSHIPS

School Total Scholarships % of Gross Tuition Average Grant % of MBAs on Scholarship
Harvard Business School $31.5 million 28.6% $32,000 50%
Penn (Wharton)* $16.9 million* 14.8% $30,500 33%
Chicago (Booth)* $16.3 million* 22.6% $30,000 60%
Stanford GSB $15.7 million 31.0% $35,830 52%
Michigan (Ross)* $15.4 million 27.5% $22,360 48%
New York (Stern) $12.8 million 26.8% $26,400* 62%*
UCLA (Anderson) $12.1 million 22.4% $25,860 65%
Northwestern (Kellogg) $11.8 million 27.9% $22,800 35%
Columbia Business School* $10.1 million 12.5% $20,500 46%
Virginia (Darden)* $8.4 million 23.4% $30,800 43%

Source: Poets&Quants from business school reports

Notes: An asterisk denotes estimates by Poets&Quants based on interviews with rival business school administrators and admission consultants

DON’T MISS: THE POETS&QUANTS SCHOLARSHIP SERIES:

THE MBA SCHOLARSHIP WARS: AN OFTEN FRENZIED PURSUIT FOR THE BEST STUDENTS

MBA SCHOLARSHIPS AT TOP BUSINESS SCHOOLS

HOW NOT TO HAGGLE FOR SCHOLARSHIP CASH

WHAT KINDS OF STUDENTS WIN THE SCHOLARSHIP GAME?

HOW AN MBA SCHOLARSHIP CAN TRANSFORM A LIFE

CONSULTANTS HYPE MBA SCHOLARSHIP CASH

SCHOLARSHIPS: WHY MANY FAIL TO NEGOTIATE

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.