Hello,

I am going to apply for some MBAs in the USA and in Europe. But I will be able to do them if given some scholarship from my home country. I am quite confident that once admitted to a good MBA I will get one of the scholarships without a problem.

However I am very messed up with how much are the costs of studying in the USA. I know that I can find the information In the B-schools' pages, but even then I can't figure out my scholarship would be enough.

So, this question goes to all of those people who has studied or are studying a MBA in the USA with a scholarship from Spain (la Caixa, Ramon Areces, and such).

Let's have the example of Stanford. In this link http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/financial_aid/tuition_expenses.html you can see that the tuition is 48k. Ís the rest supposed to be paid with the monthly scholarship assingment, +/ 2100 USD???
Is there anyway to include some of the fees in the "tuition" to be paid the committee giving the scholarship?
How do married people or couples afford this?

May anyone with personal experience shine a light on this?

Thanks in advance.

Hello dear mertvye,
First let me understand, what do you mean by fees to "include some of the fees in the tuition"? Do you mean that you want to include medical insurance or transportation costs in the tuition? That does not make sense, tuition is the sole cost of the MBA, excluding all you living expenses.
In case you obtain a scholarship for your tuition plus one of 2100 USD for living costs you are already quite lucky. It doesn't sound like a lot of money to someone used to a well paid job, but if you remember the time when you were a student, you would have been happy to have this kind of grant and it would have been enough to pay your living costs right?
If your standard is higher now, it is probably expected that this is your own business to finance more comfort. If you want to have the same living standard as now you should probably save some money from your job before doing the MBA. I presume that most MBA students, even when they have a full scholarship, have some saved money to round it up.
So if it is really important for you to keep up your living standard I advise you to postpone the MBA a bit in order to save enough money before.

About the couple question I am a bit confused. Do you expect the scholarship to pay the living costs for 2 persons? But does your partner not earn any money at all? If that is the case, this is your personal choice and you have to bear the consequences, a scholarship is always for one person I'm afraid. Or is it different in Spain?

I am sorry about this bad news! Maybe someone else is more optimistic?
Good luck anyways.
Attiya

Thank you. Let me explain what I meant.

First of all, most of my questions come from the fact that I've never been a student in the US. And in Europe education and how much or how you pay for it is quite different.

For fees I meant some fees which are strange for me. OK, health insurance, visa fees, new laptop if needed should not be included in the "tuition" but what about books, college fee, and things like that? If they are mandatory, my question is there is some way to put them in the full payment made to the university.

Second, are 2100 USD enough to live on campus/off campus with your partner? Yes, my wife won't work. Why? She won't be able to do any work. Visa restrictions. And so I won't.

To sum up, I'd like to know how much money is expected to be expended in a US university. Of course it would depend a lot on the University, but if anybody has own experience.

PS: In Spain, we are not so well paid. And those who are, won't apply for any scholarship. They don't need a MBA anymore, or their company will pay for it in Spain. So imagine that our monthly incomes are not bigger than a US undergraduate student in their summer.