How MBA Consultants Can Help You Renegotiate Your MBA Scholarship

UPDATE: This article was originally posted on March 20, 2020. It has been updated with new information and tips below. 

After all the work that goes into getting into a top MBA program, it’s certainly exciting to receive your admissions letter. However, as the price of MBA programs rise, with top-tier schools often costing more than $100,000, the work doesn’t stop there. 

Many applicants are so focused on their applications that they fail to consider the importance of MBA scholarships, leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

It’s certainly a lot of work to write these extra essays or negotiate better scholarship offers, especially as this takes a lot of strategy and planning, but it’s a huge mistake to neglect this step. 

This is when MBA consultants come in – when you are busy, tired, or need someone to help you find the right approach, they are there to make sure that you get your MBA at the best possible cost. With our help, our clients have increased, sometimes doubling, their scholarship offers from elite MBA programs. With all the money you can gain from seeking help, our support will be well worth it!

Here are just a few of the ideas that an MBA consultant can help you with to get more scholarships.

Knowing whether you got a scholarship

Most schools will give you information about scholarships you’ve received when they email you your official acceptance letter. However, if they don’t mention anything in the letter, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you were not awarded any scholarship money.

INSEAD, for example, offers two types of scholarships: one directly from the school (if you receive this one, you’ll be notified when you’re offered admission) and one you must apply separately for (the winners of these scholarships are notified several weeks later).

As such, it’s important that you understand each school’s available scholarships and the processes to apply for them. This can be a tricky process, especially when you’re applying to multiple schools, so some external help on this may be key.

 

Planning your negotiation strategy

If you haven’t been awarded the scholarships that you were hoping for, it’s always worth a try to negotiate with the schools. 

Though receiving a scholarship is always an honor, if you’re relying on scholarships to help make your dream of attending a top business school a possibility, not getting that scholarship can come as a disappointment. If you were hoping for a scholarship and didn’t receive one, it can even put a damper on the great news that you’ve landed a spot at your target MBA program.

Fortunately, everything is negotiable, including MBA scholarship consideration! 

Doing so starts by sending a polite email reinforcing your interest in the program, thanking them for any scholarship offers they did make to you and stating that you received a scholarship from other schools you’ve applied to (if this is true!). Then, you can ask if you could be reconsidered for any scholarships, given that you are very interested in their program.

Devising a successful strategy can be extremely difficult – not only is the admissions process itself selective, but going one step further and asking for (more) financial support requires a lot of thought and planning! This is another reason why MBA consultants can be helpful – they can help guide you through what you should and shouldn’t include in your negotiations. 

Here are just some of our expert tips to do plan an effective negotiation strategy:

 

Plan out your reasons to be reconsidered

When asking for something, a good place to start is to consider the question: “Why should they give me what I want?”

Though you may feel you deserve a scholarship (or a larger scholarship), the school did not initially agree with you. Changing their mind requires showing them why they should reconsider their decision. By giving them a reason to rethink their offer, you’re much more likely to reach your goal of increasing your scholarship amount.

As such, try to devise better reasons for wanting a scholarship (or a bigger scholarship) than “MBAs are expensive.” Getting them to reconsider you may depend on reiterating any elements of your profile that you think are particularly relevant to the school or the particular scholarship in question. 

This may include any updates since your application, such as a higher GMAT score, promotion or other improvements to your professional profile, or even value you think you can contribute to the community that wasn’t fully covered in your application. If you have updated or extenuating financial circumstances, this can also be very important to mention.

 

Consider how other offers might come into play

As with all types of negotiations, your final result is likely to be more favorable if you have leverage you can employ during the negotiation process.

Leverage, however, must be relevant to the negotiation. In the case of MBA scholarships, one of the greatest forms of leverage is offers from other schools.

For example, if school A originally gave you $10k, you can then go to school B and ask if they can match or improve upon the offer you received.

That’s because in the elite MBA world, schools are always trying to outdo their competition and ensure top candidates from around the world choose them. Unlike in traditional master’s programs, where scholarships are often based upon demonstrated academic excellence or even financial need, scholarships are used by business schools to lure applicants to their institution.

 

Negotiate wisely

You will be much more successful if you negotiate using a scholarship offer from a peer school. For example, if you were admitted at Harvard Business School (consistently ranked one of the best business schools in the world) without a scholarship and were admitted at a low-ranked school with a full scholarship, Harvard is unlikely to match the offer, as the school you are leveraging is not a direct competitor. 

However, in a reverse situation (you receive a full scholarship from a higher-ranked school), you are likely to convince the lower-ranked school to increase their offer.

Similarly, if schools are similarly ranked and are known to compete over similar candidates (think London Business School and IESE, Harvard and Stanford, etc.), you can also successfully negotiate a better offer.

For example, a few years ago, I worked with our client Rafael, whose main focus was to attend an MBA in the US for the best price possible. After being admitted to both USC Marshall and Vanderbilt Owen, he found he had received $80k from Marshall and just $65k from Vanderbilt. After several back-and-forth negotiations, we were able to increase his offer from Vanderbilt to nearly $100k, which sealed the deal for Rafael.

TOP TIP: when negotiating with schools, they may ask you to provide documentation that proves another program offered you a scholarship. Though you certainly don’t have to provide this documentation, showing that you did indeed receive an offer will greatly help your case!

 

Contacting the school

After you’ve developed your negotiation strategy, it’s time to get in touch with the school. This is another part of the process that an MBA consultant can help you with. By supporting you to masterfully manage your communication (including deciding what to say, how to say it, and when to say it), we can help you greatly increase your chances of obtaining more scholarship money.

Here are some of our main suggestions to contact schools.

 

Make sure you approach the right person

The admissions department at any business school is often responsible only for admissions. This means they are not always involved in the scholarship process.

When you work to negotiate a scholarship, it’s important to negotiate with the right people. These people are most often in the financial aid department. If you are not sure who this is, call or email the school and ask if they can put you in touch with the financial aid officer in charge of your application.

 

Be sincere

Though you may think a highly-convoluted argument will push you one step closer to getting what you want, in reality, sincerity is the best approach for all communication with the school. Instead of bragging about your achievements, respectfully demonstrating what you feel you can contribute and politely asking the school to reconsider (while highlighting what an honor a scholarship would be for you) is much more likely to succeed.

 

Keep it short and sweet

Keep your communication focused and concise. A 10-page essay on why you think you should receive additional scholarship money will likely get thrown out before your counterpart even reads the first word. By constructing a simple yet powerful argument, you’re much more likely to cut through the noise and connect with your counterpart.

 

Follow up

Though you don’t want to call hundreds of times or send daily emails, checking in with the school periodically (especially if you have a new development to your profile that influences your scholarship decision), is important.

For example, last year, our client Luis was admitted to Chicago Booth’s MBA/MPA dual-degree program with a $25k scholarship. Though he was grateful to receive this amount, the fact that he and his wife would both be doing an MBA and considering the fact that he would be paying for two degrees of his own meant his budget was stretched.

After receiving the offer, we immediately got in touch with the school, highlighting updates to his profile and financial constraints we felt were relevant. Luckily, they awarded Luis another $10k. At this time, however, currency fluctuations caused the MBA to become even more expensive, so we continued the conversation. Though we initially received a final determination that they weren’t able to grant any additional funding, a well-timed call to Luis’ contact allowed us to secure an additional $10k in funding!

Remember, if you don’t ask for more, you won’t get more. As long as you are polite and professional, you have nothing to lose, so follow up! 

 

Find the right consultant for your negotiation support

Here at Ellin Lolis Consulting, we pride ourselves on supporting our clients throughout the entire MBA application process.

We dedicate all of our energy and expertise to give you the confidence that you are taking the right steps toward your future with the information you need to make the best decisions, including securing the best possible scholarships for your business school journey.

That’s the approach we took with our client Luiza. In her words:

“Ellin and her team made this MBA journey something much smoother and light for me! They are very organized and give you this special personal service that makes all the difference. I felt they really understood who I am and were ready to make me confident every step of the way.

They were available 24/7, which made me feel supported, secured and appreciated. All in all, it was an amazing self-knowledge and learning process, and I passed at my first choice school (INSEAD) with a €40,000 scholarship!”

We have helped clients secure over $2.5 million in scholarships over the past 4 years by guiding them through the process of developing stand-out applications and expert negotiation strategies. So if you need help negotiating your scholarship amount or want to get a head start on developing a winning profile for your upcoming application, apply to work with us and ensure you get into your top choice schools.