I’m a freelance writer specializing in architecture and design. I’m about to apply for a 1-year fellowship that only supplies $23,000 maximum to cover tuition, room & board and airfare. This isn’t enough for where I want to go: Paris, France. What’s more, I own a condo here in the good ole u.s.a. Do I bite the bullet and apply and see what happens?
The Harvard MBA says:
I’m not a big fan of applying for schools/jobs/etc that you’re not willing to accept. I remember that when I was applying for business schools, I was thinking about whether or not to apply to the Sloan school at MIT (an excellent school, natch). My wife simply asked me, “Even if you were rejected by the other schools and you got into Sloan, would you go?”
Since the answer was No, I dumped the application form and saved myself hours of useless work. (To answer the inevitable question, the only two B-schools I applied to were HBS and Stanford. This echoes my philosophy from my college apps as well, where the only schools I applied to were Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Yale. I didn’t know as much about colleges then, or I wouldn’t have applied to Yale!)
HOWEVER, the key factor is whether or not you’d be willing to accept. It sounds like you really want to study in Paris, but you have financial hesitations. The questions I’d ask you are these:
1) Will there ever be a better time for you to do this (for example, after you have a spouse and kids)? Will you regret it if you never fulfill your dream of studying in Paris?
2) What is the level of financial hardship you’d have to go through to fulfill your dream? Let’s say that the fellowship leaves you $10,000 short. If there were a fellowship available to cover all your costs, would you pay $10,000 to an application coach who guaranteed that you’d win the fellowship? Sometimes it pays to take a look at the situation from another perspective.
3) Are there any creative ways you can make up the shortfall? Can you get a freelance assignment to write about your time in Paris? Or are their financial sacrifices you’d be willing to make to fulfill your dream.
I don’t know you personally, but my guess is that you really want to go to Paris. Better to do so with $23,000 in aid, rather than completely on your own dime.
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3 Comments
I disagree on the applying part; applying to more schools often opens up scholarship money at the school you want to go to. I regret not applying to more law schools; UCLA will only match peer schools offers, including Vandy and UTexas, which being a good samaritan I did not apply to, and am currently being screwed somewhat for it. Also, what do you have against Yale? Personally I would rather go into business rather than law; but I have pretty much no business background/connections. Even supposing I could wrangle a good job at a financial institution somehow, there is in my opinion little chance of scoring a good business school.
“What is the level of financial hardship you’d have to go through to fulfill your dream?”
How about “would I pay $10,000 for this opportunity”? Why obfuscate it any more?
“I disagree on the applying part; applying to more schools often opens up scholarship money at the school you want to go to.”
Excellent point; this is external to Chris’s model.
“Personally I would rather go into business rather than law; but I have pretty much no business background/connections. Even supposing I could wrangle a good job at a financial institution somehow, there is in my opinion little chance of scoring a good business school.”
They say the most important thing you learn at business school is your classmates’ phone numbers. You don’t have to be well-connected to get in, but you do have to make an effort once they’ve set it all up for you. Getting an internship in the company or industry you want to work in is the best way to break in. And the best way to do that is to get into the right school (or already have the qualifications, which you don’t think is the case).
Commoner,
This is a very good point. Back when I was applying to undergrad schools, financial aid offices were much less aggressive, but in today’s environment, it pays to play the schools against each other.
For business school, it matters less, since all the B-schools have loan programs (the banks figure that Harvard MBAs are a good credit risk).
As for Yale, I’m only half serious. Harvard and Yale are traditional rivals, so I’m obligated to do a little Yale-bashing. For undergrad, I’d actually rather send my kids to Stanford than to Harvard or Yale. Stanford is a much more supportive environment.