Can you negotiate Financial Aid at HBS and Stanford?
Do you have any insights on merit based scholarships for HBS? I was accepted to 3 top schools in round 1, including HBS. I am wondering if there is any merit to going to HBS and asking if they will provide scholarships to sway me their way?
Is it worth it or should I just accept my offer and hope for a reasonable need-based fellowship?
Just a little extra info, my stats are good but not great for HBS and I am not a diversity candidate.
Thanks for the help.
hmmmm, there is prob more chance they would raise your need based fellowship, as a proxy to raising the merit part, if you gave them some acceptable BS story about need, and esp. if total package fr. other 2 schools were greater. Fin Aid is one of those things where 2-4 hours of effort can result in a $$$5/10/15 k return, and there are few things in life like that, until you become a PE a-hole for real. There are no rules but most kids, even Junior Masters of the Universe, feel uncomfy about discussing $$, even their own, well, especially their own. I dont have a real data base of how schemers, beggars, and whiners have made out, but I do know that both H and S will fight real hard to keep you once you get in, and start giving off, “I’m-going-to-other- place vibes.” This has always surprised me, since I expected they would tell you, AS I WOULD, to take a hike and don’t slam the door on the way out. But that is not what happens, they really try to accommodate fence sitters w. conceirge service and pep talks w. powerful alums, etc. etc. Now whether this extends to Fin Aid, dunno, but it would not suprise me, esp. if, as noted, you used NEED based grant as the negotiating pivot, to save face for everyone.
