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JUNE 11, 1999 B-SCHOOL Q&A: FINANCIAL AID Meet Texas-Austin's Financial Aid Director A Conversation with Mary Gielstra, Financial Aid Officer at the University of Texas - Austin's Graduate School of Business
For the 1998-'99 school year, in-state students paid only $5,600 to attend UT Austin, while nonresidents shelled out a relatively affordable $14,700 (the second-lowest in and out-of-state price tags in BW's Top 25). Still, students are always looking to lighten the financial burden of earning an MBA. Have you noticed more MBA candidates coming to your office asking for assistance than in the past? Though UT's tuition has increased for the 1999/2000 academic year, it's still considered affordable. And I think the number of UT students who ask for aid through the financial aid office has remained consistent. What type of a budget do you propose both in-state and out-of-state students have in mind when attending UT? The financial aid budget for in-state students during the 1999-2000 school year is $18,314. For out-of-state, it's $29,654. How many people generally receive scholarship or federal aid? I'd say about 80%. That percentage has stayed about the same for, I'd say, the last three to four years. UT graduate students are pretty much only eligible for loan money -- that comprises the bulk of the financial aid awarded. UT Austin has no merit-based fellowship available to its students? UT doesn't really have fellowships that pay all of the tuition and fees. We define fellowship as money that covers the entire cost of education and does not need to be paid back. Scholarship, meanwhile, is money that still doesn't need to be paid back but is not equal to the entire cost of tuition. There are fellowships through other departments of the university at large that cover the full expense of the university's tuition. The B-school, however, doesn't have fellowships like that because of budgetary constraints. Instead, a finite number of scholarships that award a stipend are given to a handful of first-years. First years are eligible for only one merit-based scholarship, namely, the Texas Longhorn Scholarship. It's given to a total of approximately 7 to 10 students a year, based on the merit of their admissions application. And it awards in-state recipients around $2,000 for each year of B-school. Out-of-staters, meanwhile, receive a $1,000 stipend and an out-of-state waiver for both years that they're in the MBA program. So, that means that the Longhorn Scholarship saves out-of-state students about $11,000 each year. Second-year students are also awarded scholarship, and they apply for those scholarships during their first year. During their first semester, there's a scholarship application that's available, and they can fill it out to apply for money allotted for their second year. An average of about 150 applicants (of 380 total students per class) apply for the roughly 75 second-year scholarships. What's the range in award? $700 to $3,000. And then we also have two $10,000 scholarships that are based on a combination of merit and need. The majority of UT's fellowship and scholarship is based on need. Do students have to renegotiate fellowship awards for their second years? Or are they fixed for both years of business school? Because we only have about ten that are awarded to first years, the majority of the scholarships are awarded to second-year MBAs. Students really don't receive much fellowship during their first year because of the limited number of scholarships available. Part of it is also linked to the fellowship criteria. There are about 40 different donors, and they all have different criteria. Of course, we try to match applications to a donor's criteria, but many ask for the first-semester GPA, and that factors into the decisions. How soon should folks apply for fellowship given that most are available during the second year? Usually the scholarship applications become available in November -- in the first semester -- and all the first-year students are notified. In addition, we enroll students who have received full-tuition fellowships from an outside source. For example, UT Austin is a member of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. That's a separate agency from UT, and through the Consortium, minority students receive full tuition and fees...but not through UT. The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management is an eleven school alliance providing scholarship to a pool of high-caliber minority applicants. UT, however, has been embroiled in a contentious equal opportunity debate that puts UT in an awkward spot. Will the school be able to continue its affiliation with the Consortium? Yes. Eligible students apply directly to the Consortium and to UT separately. Then, if they are admitted to the Consortium and are admitted to and enroll in UT, they receive the fellowship. (Editor's note: UT's involvement with the Consortium is deemed avoids equal opportunity controversy because the minority scholarship application process is separate and apart for the school's admissions process.) How many students generally enroll at Texas with a Consortium scholarship in hand? There are presently 28 Consortium students enrolled in both classes. I'm not sure how many there will be for the upcoming year. It's looking like the number's going to decrease for this upcoming year, and the twenty-eight was down from previous years also. We're not certain, but we feel like [the equal opportunity debate] could be a factor. There's a stark contrast between in and out-of-state tuition. Does UT make it easy for students to apply for and gain residency during their second years and take a big bite out of their tuition? The residency office doesn't do that automatically. They really look at students that have lived here for a year not attending school and who plan to stay here after school. If you're just here in Texas going to school, they're not apt to reclassify you as a resident, so you really have to truly establish residency in Texas. Twenty-two percent of UT's class is comprised of foreigners. Are international students also eligible for the scholarships and fellowships awarded by the school? Yes, but there are really none that are designed specifically for them. Students can also apply for competitive loans. Who does UT consider a preferred lender? We leave [the selection of private lenders] totally up to the student. It's up to them, although there are two main private loans that the business students at Texas tend to apply to. One is through MBA LOANS's Tuition Loan Program (TLP), and the other is through the Access Group. Those two outfits provide competitive rates for UT students. What guides or Web sites would you suggest incoming students investigate for scholarship opportunities outside of the school's walls? I just really suggest that students do research in the reference section of their library. They have scholarship books that you can look through, and these books have every type of outside scholarship available. On the Web, there's a really good site that I recommend called fastWEB. What does UT Austin have in the way of aid and resources for students with spouses, significant others, and/or children? We really don't have any resources for spouses. We don't have any programs that, for instance, allow spouses to take classes at a discounted price or assist spouses in finding a job. Is there a day-care center available for students who have small children? There is a university-wide day-care center available, although from what I understand, there's a wait-list for it, and it's sometimes difficult to get in. Mary, what, in your opinion, should prospective UT students do to best financially prepare themselves for the MBA experience? First and foremost, see what you're eligible for and apply early. Federal loans are available to anyone from the U.S., and are awarded based on need (which is calculated by income, assets, and liabilities). On top of the federal loans, there's the private loans, and they're based on credit. I also recommend saving because there's an annual federal-loan limit. For instance, out-of-state students can only be awarded $18,500, and the rest would have to be made up of private loans. To keep the debt low I would recommend just saving as much as possible. Thank you very much Mary. Thank you. Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. 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