Congratulations! You have been accepted to b-school. Next step: paying for it.
It’s no secret that b-school is expensive. By the time you add up tuition, fees, books, travel, room and board, your bill could top $200,000 or even more by the time you graduate. This doesn’t even include the opportunity cost of stepping out of a good-paying job during the most robust economy in decades. Even accounting for lost salary, most people to forget to calculate the additional opportunity cost of two years of additional experience and what that’s worth in future earnings. All this to say, now that you’ve celebrated the great news of getting in, getting by will need to be a major focus going forward.
Your mom was right—a penny saved is a penny earned.
Of course a fantastic way to pay for business school is with cash. Hopefully your b-school planning started many years ago and you have been setting aside cash in a savings account or money-market fund. Business schools run a credit report on you before offering you admission in the first place, so if you got in, it’s at least likely that you are not in debtor’s prison (a good start). Still, b-schools do not admit students based on their ability to pay (save some cases for international students), so having a savings account flush with dough is entirely in your court. Just don’t forget that you don’t have to pay for school up front---you’d be surprised at how many students forget your bills are due only one semester at a time. This allows your savings to remain safe---and growing, while you are earning your degree.
Get your employer to pay the bill.
Using someone else’s cash to pay your bills is even better than tapping your own funds, but finding someone to do it is another story. About ten to fifteen years ago, companies sending their employees back for a fancy MBA was commonplace. The great recession pretty much changed all that, however, with cutbacks and lean HR policy. Still, there are some employers who will either reimburse your tuition or pay upfront for degrees---if their requirements are met. MBAs are so expensive, that employers willing to foot the bill will require a certain number of years’ service afterwards or else they will make you pay it back. If you’re already accepted, however, it’s too late to jump to an employer who will pay for it if you don’t already work for one.
Mom and Dad?
Parents are a good source of financial support and a parental scholarship is pretty common given the relative financial success the prior generation experienced. In short, the baby boomers and genX folks have a good amount of cash stashed away, and helping their precious schnookums continue their education is usually a pretty easy sell. If you are not so lucky, or have parents who have the “you’re an adult now and it’s time to carry your own weight” attitude, it’s time to move on to the last resort for paying for b-school:
Loans are readily available
Borrowing money to pay for b-school is the most common approach and there is no shortage of funds available. Student loans are some of the only debt that survives bankruptcy, however, so make sure before you run out and rack up a bunch of federal and/or private loans that you have a plan to pay them back. Student loans actually warrant a whole blog devoted just to them, so we’ll save that discussion, but rest assured that it’s very easy to get approved for b-school loans. Why? The earning potential of post-MBA employees is well documented and makes for reliable, low-risk repayment.
Scholarships anyone?
Scholarship and Fellowship funds also warrant their own blog topic, but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention this stalwart method for reducing MBA costs. Most schools automatically consider you for philanthropic support when you first applied so the bad news is, if your acceptance letter did not also include information about a financial award, then you may not have been selected for a fellowship or scholarship. Another form of fellowship, however is the federal work study program or school-specific work options. If you find yourself without a great plan to pay for school, reach out to the admissions office and inquire about Graduate Research Fellowship opportunities, where you can work 10-15 hours per week in the admissions office, for example or for a professor in exchange for a partial or full tuition waiver in some cases.
For information on how we can guide your business school application process, email us at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com or go to http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/contact