Business schools are entering what some call a “scholarship war,” leading to unprecedented opportunities for MBA applicants to secure financial assistance. In this engaging episode of Business Casual, Pola Lem, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards explore the dynamics of this evolving landscape and offer insights on how savvy applicants can leverage it to their advantage.
One striking revelation from the discussion comes from Pola, highlighting that an estimated 80% of top MBA candidates utilize some form of consulting to bolster their applications. This statistic underscores the competitive nature of admissions and the lengths applicants go to in crafting compelling profiles. Caroline, drawing from her experience at INSEAD, notes the rise in candidates seeking guidance, though not all rely on formal consulting; many benefit from networks of experienced colleagues within their industries.
Maria adds a thoughtful perspective, emphasizing the importance of preparation and informed decision-making. She highlights ApplicantLab, her own platform, as a valuable resource for those looking to navigate the process independently. Yet, she acknowledges the challenges of going it alone, reinforcing the idea that applicants should maximize their chances of success by tapping into available resources and insights. For anyone eyeing those top MBA programs, understanding these trends and preparing strategically has never been more crucial.
Episode Transcript
Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.
[00:00:03] – Pola
Hello everyone, I’m Pola Lem with Poets and Quants, and welcome to our weekly podcast, Business Casual. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Maria Wikvila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Maria, as you know, is founder of ApplicantLab, and Caroline was head of admissions at INSEAD and is co-founder of Fortuna Admissions. So how are things going for you this week, Maria?
[00:00:28] – Maria
They are going wonderfully, thank you for asking. I just got back from the week-long AGAC, uh, the professional MBA, uh, organization, our admissions consulting conference, which brought together admissions consultants and also, uh, heads of admissions or admissions representatives from all over the world. Uh, we were hosted for 2 and a half days by Duke Fuqua, uh, an amazing program, amazing campus, amazing team. I And then we also got to tour UNC Kenan-Flagler’s brand new building, which is kind of looks like a resort hotel, uh, but it also happens to house, uh, their undergraduate and master’s programs. And we learned a lot. We all exchanged a bunch of gossip and predictions, and, um, it was a very— it was a very productive but exhausting week.
[00:01:17] – Pola
Nice. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Caroline, good week?
[00:01:22] – Caroline
Yes, thank you. It’s been a busy week. We celebrated my second daughter’s 18th birthday on Monday, so we’ve— she had several days of different events and festivities and so on. So I’m still recovering from all of that.
[00:01:37] – Pola
Give us a taster. What did you get up to?
[00:01:40] – Caroline
Oh, wow. So we had the weekend, we had cinema outings and sunset hikes, and then she had a pool party on Monday because she’s already finished with classes at high school. So she had friends over for a party on Monday, and she’s gone for an overnight trip to Carmel with some friends. So she’s had quite, quite a fun time living the dream.
[00:02:01] – Pola
Pool parties in California, this is, this is the life. That’s what I want. Oh wow. Well, um, sadly we won’t be talking too much more about that, but I actually have a fun fact this week which I pulled from one of our stories, and I’m curious to get your takes on this. So apparently, I should say, this is based on, uh, someone’s estimate rather than, um, a, you know, a hard fact set in stone. But one of our stories has it that 80% of candidates to those top 10 MBA programs use some form of consulting, which kind of blew my mind. I mean, 80% is a, is a striking figure. Caroline, If you were to put a number on that, and I should say that’s an estimate by an admissions consultant, but I’m curious if you were to put a number to that, you know, does that sound roughly right, 80%?
[00:02:58] – Caroline
It’s very hard to say. I, I don’t know. So it was something I looked at when I was at INSEAD. Um, we would do surveys of incoming students and ask them lots of questions, including whether they had worked with a coach. And it was a pretty small number in those days, um, but it was growing at that time. And so, I think it has just increased over the years. It’s quite possible. I would have said my own guesstimate would have been around two-thirds. I think that there are a number of students who have good support from colleagues and acquaintances who’ve gone to business schools. So, for example, consultants at McKinsey or analysts at Goldman Sachs who have a lot of colleagues who’ve been to top schools, and they feel that they can crowdsource the advice they need from people around them. And so I think some of those people don’t necessarily bring in a coach, but I would— my guess would have been around two-thirds, but I don’t think we have any hard data for it.
[00:04:03] – Pola
Yeah, pretending that you, uh, want to put yourself out of a job, Maria, how hard is it to go it alone if you really want to get into one of these top 10 schools? Can you kind of crowdsource it?
[00:04:16] – Maria
Well, I mean, ApplicantLab is built for people who want to go it alone, so that’s entirely the market that I primarily cater towards. I’d be, I’d be curious to know, uh, how they defined getting— like, is this people they paid help for? Is it— was it like a one-off essay review or it’s like a quick sanity check, or was it like a full enchilada package? 80% feels very very aggressive. And yeah, in terms of people going it completely alone, if I felt that that were truly a feasible and the optimal option, then I don’t think I would have started my business. I don’t think Caroline would have started her business. I mean, you know, we really do— there’s, as with any process in life, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. And why reinvent the wheel teaching yourself all of these things. And also, you really— I mean, yes, you can always reapply, but you really only get one chance to apply to business school, maybe two. And so it’s not really a place for learning and making mistakes. You know, you might as well give it your best shot while you’re there.
[00:05:24] – Maria
And it is, it is a, a marketing exercise unlike any other, learning to market yourself to these admissions committees to figure out what it is they’re actually looking for is not something that is necessarily intuitive unless you have been doing it for 20 years the way Caroline, uh, and I have, have been. So, um, you know, I, I think— I like to think that we, we offer what we do as a, as a service because we truly genuinely believe that it adds a lot of value to our clients’ lives and their outcomes.
[00:05:56] – Pola
Yeah, you’re right. And I was sort of putting appli— I guess ApplicantLab is more like a tool rather than consulting per se, and I was lumping it in with that 80%, but I think, yeah, that there are differences there for sure. Yeah, I, so shifting gears a bit here to our main topic, I was hoping to talk about these so-called scholarship wars. So last week, the Wall Street Journal reported a quote unquote fire sale on US MBAs, and that is quite a headline in this climate we’re in where there’s a lot of pressure on domestic MBAs, really from all sides. So in March, even well before this piece, which I should say Poets and Quants reported on, Bloomberg reported on this sort of emerging scholarship arms race between business schools. But then As my colleague Christy writes in our analysis of this, part-time and online programs are a very different thing from a full-time MBA. But there’s clearly some truth to this story, right? So, uh, the journal article highlighted two examples of this happening. So since last autumn, uh, Purdue University, the, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, has slashed the cost of its MBA, and that’s a 48 credit online STEM MBA from $60 grand for out-of-state students all the way down to $35,000.
[00:07:36] – Pola
So that’s a 40% cut, pretty sizable. And then we’ve got the University of California Irvine, uh, offering a discount as high as 38% for Flex and, uh, Executive MBA programs. So Caroline, would you agree with that assessment that there’s a scholarship arms race underway, and how do you see that from where you’re sitting?
[00:08:04] – Caroline
Well, I think there have always been scholarship wars. I certainly saw that when I was head of admissions at INSEAD, that there was a lot of competition between schools for the top students. So I’m not sure that this is something that’s very new. There may be some schools that are offering new discounts and new scholarships. I think it is an extremely competitive market, and it is tough for some schools, and there has been tremendous growth in the number of master’s offerings in, in the US and internationally. So there was another Wall Street Journal article I was reading this week that talked about how master’s degree programs had grown nearly 70% over a 20-year period. So that’s huge growth in the offering, and there is also growth in demand. We see more students pursuing master’s degrees, but nevertheless, it does create a great deal of competition. And of course, the emergence of online programs means that you have a global audience for many of those degrees. And so some schools that may have had a very good business in the past where they were serving a more regional or local market are now facing additional competitors because students who may in the past have come to them, um, maybe signing up for online programs with schools that are on the other side of the country or even in another country.
[00:09:33] – Caroline
Um, so the competitive landscape has changed a lot, I think, and a lot of different dynamics, um, playing into this. Of course, we also see a decline in international applicants applying to, um, schools in the US. So I think that that is hurting schools at every single level. We’re hearing that even from the very top US schools that have seen quite dramatic declines in the volume of international applications. It’s quite extraordinary when you have the likes of Harvard and Stanford who are seeing a drop in— a really substantial drop in volume of international applicants. And so if those schools are suffering, then that is even more painful for schools that are further down, um, the pecking order. Um, so I think it is a challenging time for schools, but I think that also there have always been competition between schools, and they’ve always used scholarships, financial aid, discounts to attract candidates.
[00:10:37] – Pola
Nothing is new under the sun, where— yeah, but it is competitive. I mean, if we look at that ranking of schools, Maria, are those discounts largely clustered within sort of mid or lower tier schools? What are they like compared to, say, your, your top 10?
[00:10:57] – Maria
Yeah, so, you know, as Caroline was saying, this— the idea of, of the talent wars, using scholarship to lure away talent, that has been around for forever. Similarly, the rough rule of thumb I give my clients is, look, the, the better the school, the less likely they are to give you money, because they know that they don’t have to give you as much money to convince you to go there. Uh, that has historically been the case, and I think it’s basic supply and demand 101. Uh, so it shouldn’t shock anyone that that does tend to be the case. And I think the, the specific examples that the journal article cited, some of them I believe may be— they may be victims of their own overly aggressive and overzealous expansion in the first place, right? There’s some of the, the Masters in AI that’s launching, um, these flex executive programs, the online MBAs. There was such a rush, I think, for a number of schools to try to maximize revenue, to leverage their existing infrastructure to maximize revenue in these unique Like, let’s let— how— why don’t we launch this other master’s degree? Why not? And now I think that they may have overexpanded.
[00:12:01] – Maria
And so when you look at at least the specific programs that were cited in the journal article, to me they look like programs that were perhaps rapidly developed or may have overly expanded. And now they’re realizing, uh-oh, we may have, we may have flown a bit too close to the sun in terms of how many programs we’re offering and how much we’re charging for them. But I do not believe that the very tippy-top high-quality programs are going to start offering significant discounting. Just like, you know, a Louis Vuitton handbag rarely goes on fire sale, I think the same is true for the very top programs because the ROI will be there even in difficult times.
[00:12:39] – Pola
Yeah. Oh, I love that comparison. So, Caroline, I mean, obviously, we’ve been saying it’s less likely that you get one of these scholarships if you’re off to a top-tier school. But if you’re looking at your top 10, top 20, what is that likelihood roughly? And then within that, are you, you know, how likely are you to get a very large portion of your studies funded?
[00:13:10] – Caroline
Well, it depends a lot on the candidate, as Maria said. And the top schools do have quite deep pockets, although many of them are largely focused on meeting financial need rather than offering merit scholarships. So they, you will need to demonstrate your, your financial need. They will be looking at your previous salary, your savings, your assets, and so on. And you’ll need to provide that information to, to get the, the financial support from a lot of the top schools.
[00:13:43] – Pola
Yeah, will many of them— I mean, that, that’s another good point. Uh, so, so will many schools meet your demonstrated need? Is, is that— I know that’s a, that’s a really obviously a large question because you have so many different schools, but is there any kind of rule of thumb you’d say where applicants could expect to have, um, you know, that, that need-based funding?
[00:14:08] – Caroline
So with the top schools, as I said, I mean, they do have very deep pockets. So generally they are able to support candidates who do have that financial need. And typically it’s a smaller pool of candidates who really don’t have the ability to pay for the program than you would see, for example, at the undergraduate level, because typically incoming candidates have already been working for a few years. They’ve been able to save some. Money for the tuition fees and their living expenses. And so they may not be in, in the same situation that they would have been when they were going into college, for example. So the, the top schools do have incredible resources at their disposal to support students, and, um, and that also can increase the competition, of course, then with other schools. And I know that schools like INSEAD and London Business School do sometimes struggle to compete with the the top US schools because they’re able to offer such incredibly generous scholarships.
[00:15:08] – Pola
Hmm. Yeah, I should say we’ve got a stat from the story. This is according to GMAC, uh, 47% of incoming graduate management students received merit-based scholarships last year, and that’s up from roughly 32% a decade earlier. So clearly the, the bigger picture figures show that that this is becoming more common. Um, Maria, I’m about to ask you what sorts of scholarships applicants can get, but I just wanted to mention two examples from this piece first. So we’ve got, for instance, uh, the Washington University, uh, in St. Louis, the Olin Business School, recently launched a $10,000 scholarship. That’s for professionals whose careers have been disrupted by AI, uh, so kind of a niche one there. And then we’ve got a 50% scholarship to graduates of Maryland colleges from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Yeah. What are the kind of— are you seeing various different kind of scholarships? I mean, if I’m an applicant, where do I look for those? Is it just kind of basically down to looking at those individual websites? Is there any quick way of searching for those, like a broader list?
[00:16:28] – Maria
So if, if the question is, okay, I’m an applicant and I’m trying to get a sense of am I going to get a scholarship, and if so, how much? First of all, I tell people, go into this process assuming that you’re going to get nothing, and then that way if you do get something, hooray. Uh, but then if you happen to not get anything, you’re not completely shocked, and you know, there’s no, you know, ripping of the garments and gnashing of teeth, because I think you need to expect Because even though— so the, the school’s financial aid websites themselves often publish an aggregate number. So they will say something on their website like, uh, 50% of our incoming class will receive some sort of financial, you know, of a grant award, not a loan. Uh, and then they will also tell you what the average amount of that loan is. So if 50% of the class gets some sort of merit-based scholarship, or 47% according to GMAC, but that doesn’t mean that that’s 100%. That might be a $5,000 scholarship on an $80,000 a year program. So first of all, don’t just assume that, that, that scholarship means full ride scholarship.
[00:17:30] – Maria
There’s a pretty, you know, it’s technically speaking, a dollar scholarship would count as a scholarship. But so, so the schools themselves will actually publish, here’s how many people on average get it and here’s how much we give them. And then if you really want to start digging in, this is where this, this concept of trying to find what I call the resume twin is so useful. You try to find someone who’s currently attending the school And of course, you know, you’re not going to get all of their entire life story, but you try to find someone whose pre-MBA background looked an awful lot like your background. So if you are an oil field engineer from Kazakhstan, um, who is a local candidate, you know, you grew up in Kazakhstan and you work in oil field engineering, and you find someone else in a U.S. school who also had a very similar background, um, you could probably ask them without getting too personal, of course, but you could maybe say like, hey, like are, you know, how’s the financial aid situation working out at your school? Because as Caroline mentioned, the vast majority of scholarship funds that are given at the MBA level do tend to be need-based, looking at your prior income and what your assets are and what your financial responsibilities are.
[00:18:40] – Maria
So for the merit-based scholarships, those can be based upon— I, I tend to think that sometimes it’s a bit of a war for the GMAT scores. So You know, if someone— if a school wants a candidate that has like a particularly strong score, especially that helps to determine it, or just, you know, kind of determine between— if you’ve got 500 consultants from Deloitte in your applicant pool and you give offers to 10 of them, um, and they all look really similar on paper, maybe that’s the differentiating factor, right? The, the standardized test score can be a concrete way to differentiate between people who look an awful lot alike. Awful lot alike on paper. And it can also be down to the leadership experiences that someone has had. If someone, if someone has had a really significant impact and their career, they look like they are a rocket ship captain, and I want my school’s name affiliated with this person because I’m making a bet on their ability for their career to continue to just go up into the, into the stars, then I might be more willing to give them that money to lure them away and so that my, my school’s name is affiliated with their name for what is hopefully the rest of a very fruitful career.
[00:19:48] – Pola
Yeah, I like the term resume twins too. I actually— that reminds me, I learned an interesting new term this week, again from a Poets and Quants story, which was job hugging. I think I’d heard that described before, but the context was instead of rushing into a full-time MBA program, a lot of professionals are now kind of clinging to those jobs that they’ve already got. Exactly.
[00:20:15] – Maria
Yeah.
[00:20:16] – Pola
So, yeah, I don’t know, Caroline, whether you’ve got any other good quick phrases for us or else tips for applicants if they’re looking for a merit-based scholarship.
[00:20:30] – Caroline
Sure. Yeah. And just on the job-hugging point, I did like that term as well, and it’s definitely something that we see periodically. I don’t think it’s a new phenomenon. Essentially, I think you see that when there is uncertainty in the economy and the, the article, Pinku, talks about how the MBA is typically countercyclical. I don’t think that we are bucking that trend right now. I think it’s still countercyclical. You will see a surge in applications if there is a recession and there are huge waves of layoffs. And then if the economy is going gangbusters and everything looks great, then you will see a downturn in application volume. Right now, we’re not in either of those scenarios, right? We’re in a period with a lot of uncertainty, economic uncertainty, geopolitical uncertainty, et cetera. And, and in those periods, young professionals are more reluctant to leave a job, right? And so they are less likely to apply and go for a full-time 1 or 2-year program. And so it’s not new. We’ve definitely seen this in the past, but I think that, you know, it’s understandable given current conditions. And then as regards your question about scholarships, well, a mistake that I see— I’ve seen candidates make with regard to scholarships is just applying for too many and sort of having a scattergun approach of applying for everything.
[00:22:03] – Caroline
And think that’s going to work. It’s much better to look carefully at where you are a good fit for the scholarships, and it can take quite a bit of time to dig through that. As you mentioned, you probably need to go to the school websites, and they will have detailed information about the different scholarships. And it can be a bit complicated because— so scholarships are often given by a specific donor who has specific interests. And so they are looking to support people from a specific type of background. And so you need to go to the school websites and see which scholarships do I fit with? Where do I fulfill these criteria? And the closer the fit you are for those criteria, maybe they’re looking for entrepreneurs from Latin America, right? There could be very, some very specific scholarships. And the better you fit with a specific criteria that they’re looking for, the more likely you are to get those scholarships. And if you can find some niche scholarships where you are a very good fit, then that probably gives you a good chance of getting the scholarship because the more narrow the criteria, the fewer applicants.
[00:23:22] – Caroline
Applicants that they will have for that specific scholarship. So it’s definitely something where it’s worth doing your homework and really spending some time digging through the school websites to understand the scholarship portfolio and, um, what the— what the criteria are. For many schools, there is a mix of merit and financial need for scholarships, um, and then some scholarships are just granted as what we call spot scholarships. So those are ones where you don’t apply. They are just scholarships that are granted at the time of admission. So essentially, those are really tuition discounts that schools are offering to candidates who are outstanding candidates that they really, really want to come to that school. So that’s not something that you— for those scholarships, you just really need to stand out in the applicant pool. But otherwise, once you’re admitted, normally there are other scholarships that you can apply for, and you really need to do your homework to understand your options and where you’re a good fit.
[00:24:27] – Pola
Thank you for— sorry, thanks for reminding me of that final type of scholarship which I actually forgot to ask about. Maria, any parting words of wisdom on scholarships, including— actually Caroline just touched on this, but timeline, when do you typically apply?
[00:24:47] – Maria
Yeah, so, so, yeah, thanks, Caroline, for, for bringing that up. There are actually some schools that in the application themselves to apply to the school, they will have a separate essay where they will say something like, we have this following program. If you’d like to be considered for it, please fill out the following essay, or please respond to the following prompts. Um, so yes, there were some, some schools where they just, it’s automatic, but there are some schools where you are invited to apply. In some cases, you apply for the scholarship at the same time that you apply for the program. In other cases, you get accepted to the program and then they say, if you would like to be considered for a scholarship, please respond to the following essays, or whatever their own process is. So the timing really does— it really does vary school to school. Unfortunately, there’s no, uh, consistency to it. I do wish that all schools would do it at the front end because then it just— if somebody gets accepted and then they have to wait another month or two to find out if they’re getting a scholarship, it just— I think it delays the uncertainty for parties involved.
[00:25:47] – Maria
So yeah, and unfortunately, I wish I had like a magic wand that would just give you, here’s the blanket answer, but you just, you’re just gonna have to do some, do some legwork and research every— the schools that you’re interested in and what their specific policies are.
[00:26:03] – Pola
Lots of, lots of legwork, lots of websites. And with that, everyone, we’re out of time, but please come back next week. And if you liked the discussion today, check out poetsandquants.com. Thanks very much to my co-hosts, Maria and Caroline, and thank you all for listening.
