Since its earliest days, HBS has committed to educating students with the highest potential for leadership, regardless of their financial circumstances. As a result, the School is able to attract and enroll exceptional women and men from a wide range of backgrounds and prepare them to make an impact in business and society. This effort is amplified by HBS’s Racial Equity Plan, which calls for the School to attract additional Black talent to all parts of the community and that has, in turn, inspired new efforts by the MBA Admissions and Financial Aid team to increase the number of qualified Black applicants as well as applicants from other underrepresented minority groups.

While admissions are based on merit, financial aid awards are based on demonstrated need, and in recent years, HBS has looked at this need with a new lens to ensure that a student’s complete lived experience is considered. In the following conversation, Chad Losee (MBA 2013), managing director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, and Susan Gilbert, director of MBA Financial Aid, discuss the “MBAid Journey”—the financial assistance given to those in the MBA Program—which enables students to attend the School, explore career options, and pursue their passions after graduation.

Photo by Susan Young

What is the significance of the term “MBAid Journey” as it applies to the assistance provided to many HBS students while they are at the School and beyond?

Chad Losee: In fulfilling our mission to educate leaders who make a difference in the world, we don’t want people to be constrained by financial barriers that would prevent them from accessing the School or being successful in the MBA Program or thereafter. So, we think about this as a journey through three time periods and examine the support that we can provide at each step, especially given the substantial investment the students are making in terms of their own time and money. For all three stages, we are deeply grateful to HBS alumni who generously support our financial aid programs as they pay it forward to the next generation of HBS students.

The first is tuition assistance as they enter the program—the need-based scholarships we offer to nearly half of our MBA students and the complementary fellowships available to some students based on their backgrounds and interests.

The second is the summer experience. Many people come to HBS because they’re thinking, “I’ve done well so far, but there might be something else out there where I can make a bigger impact or that’s more meaningful.” Those “something elses” don’t always pay the same amount, and that’s where our Summer Fellowship Program comes in, especially this past year during the pandemic when we provided additional support to students and helped them with career exploration.

The third is post-graduation. HBS’s career support programs—including those providing supplemental income or loan repayment assistance—help students pursue what they are uniquely passionate about and good at and not be as constrained by finances. About half of our students take on debt, and some may feel that they won’t be able to work in their dream job or industry or geography because some areas don’t pay as well as others.

Why is it critical to the School’s mission to have socioeconomic diversity?

Susan Gilbert: Our goal always has been to attract students from different backgrounds, including socioeconomic. Historically, our formula for calculating financial need only considered a student’s own income and assets, which are still an important part of the equation. Recently, we adjusted the rubric to include additional information about their socioeconomic background so that we can get a more complete picture of their financial need.

Chad Losee: A key component of our overall efforts to create a more diverse and equitable community is to make sure we incorporate socioeconomic diversity. One reason is that the effectiveness of the case method depends on students coming in with a variety of experiences. If we only had one industry, geography, culture, or socioeconomic experience represented in our classroom, that’s going to give a distorted view of the world. With a diverse set of students, discussions in HBS classrooms can appropriately incorporate many viewpoints and help students prepare to respond to big challenges such as social mobility and inequality. We need voices of people who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds in our classrooms to broaden the range of perspectives on the real-world challenges the students will face as business leaders.

That speaks to the larger role—one Dean Srikant Datar has emphasized—that HBS needs to play at the intersection of business and society. An important way we can do that is by educating great people who are concerned about the world and who understand that the way they manage a business will affect their employees, customers, and their communities. It would be hard to do that if we didn’t have diversity in all these dimensions in our classrooms.

Given the cost of attending graduate school, how does the fear of incurring a large amount of debt keep individuals from applying to HBS?

Chad Losee: We did a market research study in 2019 to understand what prevents qualified potential students from applying. Financial constraints are at the top of that list. That’s differentially true for groups that are underrepresented in our applicant pool—those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, underrepresented minorities, and women. This is one reason why we have a focus on financial accessibility and affordability.

The long-term rewards of an HBS MBA are considerable. What we hope potential students understand is that this is an investment in themselves. There are upfront costs that we can help students navigate, and we have included on our website a blog series featuring stories about how some recent graduates have managed their debt.

Thanks to the support of alumni, we have held tuition flat for the past three years despite increasing costs to deliver the program and our continued commitment to expanding need-based scholarships. We’ve also discovered that just the cost of applying to HBS can be a barrier for some students, so we recently launched a need-based application fee waiver. When we piloted this, we saw an uptick in numbers among those applying who identify as first-generation college students, some underrepresented minorities, and some women.

Photo by Mary Knox Miller

How confident can a student from a low-income background be that HBS will help provide the financial assistance needed to attend for two years, including the ability to partake in all aspects of the MBA experience?

Susan Gilbert: It depends on what their expectations are. I think there are a lot of people who come here and think it should be free, and it’s not. Student savings or loans are still part of our strategy and will be a component of their funding. There is tremendous support for students here, and thanks to the School and the alumni who support financial aid, we have a large scholarship budget, so students can feel confident that we will treat them fairly and we’ll look at their full situation.

Fostering socioeconomic inclusion is a major focus for us in Admissions and Financial Aid. The Socioeconomic Inclusion Task Force, which brings together staff members from Admissions, Financial Aid, and Careers and Professional Development, as well as students, makes sure that there are activities on campus that are not expensive and that give students a chance to connect socially. We also include a modest amount for activities and travel in the aid we provide.

In addition, we offer a financial wellness series that helps level the playing field for personal finance knowledge. The series includes webinars on student loans and personal finance decisions as well as limited individual appointments with a financial advisor.

Chad Losee: In conversations I have had with alumni, some are concerned not just about students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, but also those from the working class and the middle class, and they wonder if these groups are being left behind. Obviously, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds would get more support, but we’re helping those from the working and middle classes as well. That is one of the advantages of a need-based financial aid program.

What kind of additional support is provided by complementary fellowships?

Susan Gilbert: Complementary fellowships require a separate application and are awarded in addition to need-based scholarships. They are available to students with specific backgrounds and interests, such as in the nonprofit and the health care sectors, and even those who do not receive need-based aid may apply. Our newest one is the John C. Phelan (MBA 1990) Forward Fellowship, which supports students from lower-income backgrounds who have carried significant financial burdens or obligations, such as family members who are dependent on them.

We also plan to create a Recognizing Individuals Seeking Equity (RISE) Fellowship to support students with financial need who have demonstrated a commitment to serving Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and other marginalized communities of color in their activities prior to attending HBS.

How critical is the support of alumni and friends to the School’s efforts to make the MBA Program more accessible?

Chad Losee: We have been able to provide to students, especially through the pandemic, incredible financial support because of alumni and friends of the School whose generosity has given us the flexibility to meet current needs.

For this academic year, we’ve welcomed just over a thousand new students, and we’re really grateful that the School and alumni have supported us so that we will have on a per-student basis the same amount of financial aid resources available for the larger class size.

I don’t want to miss an opportunity to say “thank you” to everyone who has made this possible. As we reflect on our mission to educate leaders who make a difference in the world, alumni support for financial aid and inclusivity ensures we can attract exceptional students from a diverse set of backgrounds. We know that some may not have applied at HBS at all without this support. In this way, the generosity of alumni is truly life changing—both for the students directly supported and for all their classmates who benefit from the unique perspectives represented in every HBS MBA class.

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