Grad School: Funding woes & Scholarships

You’ve been dreaming to undertake a master’s, you know which university to apply to yet funding is your biggest stumbling block. This article is for you.

I had the good fortune of reading for my MBA at the Said Business School at Oxford University on two prestigious scholarships, The Weidenfeld- Hoffman Scholarship & the Skoll Scholarship. With this piece, I would like to give you tangible steps through which you can solve the obstacle of funding for your dream grad school.

Before I share those steps with you, a bit about me so that you have context. My journey to securing a master’s program was not straightforward. Like most applicants I speak to, I thought getting the admission into a master’s program was the difficult part, funding it should be relatively easy. I learnt from experience that this is not the case.

The first time I applied to Said Business School was in 2015. I did secure an admission, however, simultaneously, I was also setting up my business, Clinic5. The timing was not feasible to leave for an MBA hence I requested a deferral. I got one thankfully and I was able to set up my enterprise.

The next year, 2016 rolled in, I was now ready to go this year. This year, I did not really have a plan for funding. I did not spend much time planning out what scholarships were available instead I relied just on the university communication that came my way. I applied to 3 scholarships. Got into the final round of all three and I thought that would be good enough. Lo & behold, none of the three worked out. This was a jolt to me and threw a spanner in the works. To add salt to the wounds, my admission to SBS would also lapse since you could only defer it once. It was extremely disappointing but, I had made up my mind that I was going to get my MBA from SBS only because that’s the school that aligned with my values.

The next year 2017–2018, I decided to go in with a plan, I made a list of all the scholarships that were out there. I searched through the university website, found 4 scholarships that were relevant. This was followed by a search on google in general. This gave me 3 more. Then I made an excel sheet with the deadlines for each application, the application instructions and links to their pages. I sent out 7 applications for funding this year.

This approach yielded a much higher return out of the 7, 3 worked out and I chose 2 out of the 3 because they aligned best with the work I do, one is for social entrepreneurs, the second is for leadership development.

You must be wondering at this point. Wow! Three years of work to get there isn’t there an easier way to do this. Yes, there is. And I am writing this article for you so that you could do in one year what I managed in three. I am assuming you’re a full-time employee and the only time you have to do your applications is over the weekend so the timelines have been drawn with that angle.

Month 1 — Research Schools

Step 1: Figure out your master's degree — fit is extremely important. Don't go for rankings, look at their graduates and decide if these are the values you espouse. Decide on 3–4 schools and stick with them.

Spend about 1 month on this

Month 2 — Apply to Schools

Step 2: Send in a stellar application. Attention to detail matters. Effort shows. A hastily written essay and one which comes out of lots of reflection are starkly different. When writing essays be authentic — I cannot emphasize that enough.

Spend about 2–4 weekends on this

Month 3–5 — Apply to Scholarships

Step 3: Research all the scholarships out there and put them in a list. This should take you one weekend. Do the hard work yourself. Don’t look for shortcuts. This is your journey, not your friends older brother who went to XYZ school. Put in the work and you will be rewarded.

Spend about 1–2 weekends doing this

Step 4: Write an application for the various scholarships every weekend. Don’t wait for the deadline. This makes life much easier and you are not sending in rushed applications in the end. Assuming you’re applying to 6 scholarships here. Imagine the value of each application. It’s worth over $30,000 if you secure the scholarship. Keep that perspective and give it that kind of effort

If you spend one weekend per application that’s 6 weekends. (1.5 months)

Month 5 — End of Journey

With a plan, hard-work & persistence, all of the above is possible. People who go to top programs on full funding are regular people like you and me. You can do it too. Godspeed!