3 Questions to Ask About online Business School Financial Aid 2016

3 Questions to Ask About online Business School Financial Aid 2016
Applicants who are offered scholarships should find out if they can be renewed, says one expert.


1. What does the total cost of attendance include? When it comes to paying for school, applicants can't just think about tuition, says Liz Riley Hargrove, associate dean for admissions for the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. The school usually has about 430 students in each of its incoming full-time MBA classes and between 3,000 and 3,500 applicants.

Students most also front the money for a number of fees, she says.

"There's a student government association fee. There's a pre-term fee that most schools will include for either your technology or things that you have access to in the facility. You have to think about your books and course packs, as well as student medical insurance," says Hargrove.

Accepted students can also ask if the total cost will include room and board and travel expenses, says DeGisi.

2. How much will I be able to make after school? As applicants think about how much debt they want to take on for school, it's important to also consider what they'd like to do after graduating and how much they'll make as an MBA, DeGisi says.





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They can speak with a school's career services department, he says, to learn the average salary of graduates from that school in specific fields.

Some schools, such as the Graduate School of Management at University of California—Davis and The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania, also post online the average salary of graduates in various fields.

This kind of data can help students gauge their return on investment for an MBA program, DeGisi says.





For MBA applicants who've already received an acceptance letter for the upcoming school year, the pressure is off. Knowing there's somewhere to enroll takes away some of the stress that comes with business school admissions.

Figuring out how to pay for school, however, can be another stressful job that kicks into gear once applicants are admitted.

It's important for accepted students to speak with financial aid experts about their options for paying for school as they make plans for where to attend, experts say.

"This is one of the biggest financial obligations that anyone will have at this age," says Phil DeGisi, an MBA graduate of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University and chief marketing officer at CommonBond, a student loan refinancing company. "You can easily leave school having paid $200,000. So when you're talking about that sum of money, it's really important to know what that will mean coming out of school."

[Consider five funding options to help pay for an MBA.]

It's important that students ask questions that will help them form a strategy for how they'll pay off their debt, he says. They can start by asking these four when discussing their options for paying for their education with their school's financial aid office or other experts on financial aid, experts say


3. Are scholarship offerings renewable? Schools that offer scholarships usually allow students to use them for both years of a full-time MBA program, but not always, says Evelyn Tate, director of graduate recruitment and admissions at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University.

At D'Amore-McKim, where about 600 students apply for the full-time MBA program and about 30 percent are admitted, the scholarships are renewable, she says.

If a school offers applicants one-year scholarships, Tate suggests they contact the admissions office and push for it to cover two years.

"If you don't ask, then you're not going to get a renewed scholarship," she says.

4. What kinds of part-time employment opportunities are available? Sometimes scholarships and loans won't cover all of a student's expenses. Accepted applicants should ask about other ways to make money for supplementing their income, experts say.

At Duke, they can work as a teaching assistant for a faculty member, work in the admissions office or work for a center within the business school, says Hargrove