MBA Scholarships in Europe: Advice and Trends

In some quarters, loans for an MBA program of study have become more elusive too, as banks make safeguards that limit who they are willing to lend to. At SDA Bocconi, this change has been particularly felt by those wishing to study in Europe who are from outside of the region.

Developments such as these serve only to increase some candidates’ reliance on securing grants or MBA scholarships in Europe. 

In Bocconi’s case, a perceived shortfall in loan availability caused the school to sign up to a pilot scheme with Prodigy Finance which is designed to help international students access up to 80% of tuition costs for an MBA program. With some of its current students already invested in the pilot, SDA Bocconi believes that many more will be able to access funds in this way next year.

When prospective MBA students in Western Europe choose which business school they wish to attend, financial aid availability currently stands as second only to a school’s reputation in their decision-making process. In Eastern Europe, it’s the number one consideration.  

Rising interest might make the search for scholarship funding a more competitive environment on the whole, but that doesn’t make it impossible to secure – especially if your research into the best school for your individual profile and background has been thorough.

The extent to which scholarship criteria can vary between schools in Europe is hard to verify, as much will come down to the opinions of individual admissions teams. However, it is generally thought that different schools are interested in different kinds of candidates.  

Indeed, it’s clear that schools will, in their scholarship choices, be looking for people they believe to be perfect additions to a particular program.

“The candidates being offered a scholarship are really those that, I would say, all schools would like to have in their MBA environment,” she says, adding that SDA Bocconi’s admissions team fundamentally search for those with the potential to be “winning personalities within the MBA and even more importantly after it, in their professional life.”

Rewarding excellence in MBA scholarships doesn’t just benefit the individual. It should also offer “something significant for the rest of the class,” in Russo’s opinion. “They can take advantage of the fact that brilliant students are part of the MBA class.”

Schools are much more likely to offer this kind of merit-based funding, as opposed to needs-based, because, as Russo explains: “Need is very difficult to ascertain.”

Russo underlines the need to factor living costs into the equation, and asks in particular for candidates to remember to budget for the fact that pursuing a full-time one-year MBA program entails a loss in employment earnings for its duration. 

In terms of the right way to go about winning scholarship funding, it seems the personal touch can go a long way to showing a school that you mean business – and that their institution is the place where you belong.  

Russo says that taking the time to connect with school representatives at an admissions event or during a school visit can be to a candidate’s great advantage:

“Let us appreciate their motivation, maturity, interpersonal skills even before they sit for the selection interview.”

This also means planning ahead – not only so that every applicable source of financial aid is still available but also so that you can feel secure in the knowledge that you have found the right MBA program to meet your individual aims and ambitions. 

Find out more about studying an MBA in Europe using region and country guides for the continent.