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MAY 7, 1999 B-SCHOOL Q&A: FINANCIAL AID Meet Cornell's Financial Aid Director A Conversation with Ann Richards, Director of Financial Aid and Associate Director of Admissions at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management
A lot of people underestimate the amount of money that goes into B-school. How much should incoming students be prepared to spend at Cornell's Johnson School? We develop a budget by year, which includes tuition, room and board, books, and personal expenses. For the 1998-99 academic season, we told first years to budget $40,300. The [estimated] budget fluctuates every year. Do costs increase or decrease moving on to the second year of your MBA? In the second year, the living component increases somewhat, but the allowance that we build in for first-year computer purchase, if necessary, doesn't carry over to the second year. So the estimated budget that we create reduces a bit because we don't include the $2,500 computer allotment. Hence, borrowing may be lower. Do a majority of second years live off campus, increasing the costs? At Cornell, the majority of second years and first years live off campus. The university has campus housing, but, most of our students choose to live in nonuniversity housing. That affects the bottom line, depending on a student's lifestyle. For instance, students who chooses to live by themselves in a one-bedroom apartment will have housing costs that are greater than two students who share a two-bedroom apartment. There are a number of ways that students can lessen the financial burden of going to business school. Can you first explain the differences between fellowship, federal aid, assistantships and such? At Cornell, we use the terms scholarship and fellowship interchangeably. Essentially, it means free money -- money you do not have to pay back. The school has a scholarship budget that is, in part, supplemented by private donations and endowed scholarship. How much of the class tends to get some portion of scholarship? About 30% of the students receive scholarship support each year. That includes school scholarship. It also includes funds that students may have secured prior to coming to Cornell -- for instance, an employer subsidy or an employee-awarded scholarship. Is company sponsorship increasing in popularity? I think it is becoming increasingly popular that companies will sponsor students. That's becoming an option for more companies. And there are some very established scholarship programs like the GM Fellowship, for instance. Do you urge admitted student to try and broker sponsorship for themselves? We try to encourage applicants. When people submit an application to us, we send out a letter encouraging them to seek funding from all sources. That includes their employer, any private scholarship organizations, civic organizations that they may be a part of, as well as family resources. Does Cornell's Johnson school offer assistantships to offset the costs faced by students during their second year of study? No, not really. We don't have assistantships in the traditional sense of the word in that there's no tuition remission or tuition reduction. But we do have students who work as research assistants and teaching assistants for our faculty. But, they're paid on an hourly basis. I would guess roughly 20 or so exist. How does the financial-aid office determine how much and which students to bestow scholarship upon? Scholarship at the Johnson School is awarded on the basis of merit. We take into consideration the same factors that we look at during the admissions process. So, applicants don't really do anything besides maybe check a box on their application that says, "Please consider me for financial aid"? For students who apply this fall (the future Class of 2002), we will have a separate financial-aid application that will include general biographical information, such as their previous employers and their civic activities. We're trying to cull things that they may not have put on a resume but that may qualify them for some kind of scholarship or fellowship. How much aid does the Johnson School have available for its students? Has the school's aid budget been growing? We have about $2.5 million dollars to award. That's for both the first and second years, and has increased substantially over the past couple of years. Several years ago, we received funding for the Park Fellowship Program, and that increased the amount that we could award dramatically. The Park Fellowship is a two-year award, and we select 30 students each year. So, in any given year, we have 30 first-year and 30 second-year students that are awarded the fellowship. It's a full scholarship plus stipend and is the only award of its kind that we have. So, when you talk about Johnson's $2.5 million scholarship kitty, a big chunk of that belongs strictly to the Park Fellowship Program? That's correct. What's the average amount of scholarship aid a student receives at Cornell? The average scholarship award for the 1998-99 academic year was $8,912 (without Park Fellowship recipients), and $16,223 (including Park Fellowship recipients). It ranges, really, from $5,000 to full tuition, plus an $8,000 stipend. When is the best time for student to apply for scholarship? It's always better to apply earlier for any scholarship program. If any students are applying for private scholarships -- if they use one of the scholarship search sites and are applying privately for scholarships -- the earlier the better. The same is true for the Park Program. What specific scholarship-search sites do you recommend for students to look into, outside of what Cornell has to offer? FastWEB is a great Web site. Also, the Financial Aid Information Page is a very comprehensive financial-aid Web site. It includes information on loan and scholarship programs and has a tremendous number of links to other financial-aid sources and sources of information. It also has information for international business students. Foreign students do not have as many financial-aid options available to them as their U.S. counterparts. Does Cornell have any programs in place to help its international constituency? Fortunately, at Cornell, we do consider all students, including internationals, for scholarship support, and some of our endowed scholarships are targeted toward international students, such as the Angear European Scholarship. That's a $5,000-per-year award given to one first-year student who is a European citizen. Do you offer any discount to foreigners who, say, pay their entire tuition up front and thus quell a school's fears about a sudden currency devaluation? No, we don't currently have an organized program like that. Sometimes students do escrow their money here in the States for two years. In some cases, some schools are requiring that. I know there are some medical schools, for instance, that require students to escrow the full cost of their tuition prior to starting their program. But we don't require that. As a percentage, how many of Johnson's 577 MBA students have taken out a loan? About 53% of our students borrow. But I would say 75% to 80% of the students receive some assistance through the school or the university. And that may be processing a private loan or a federal loan or scholarship assistance. About 25% to 30% of the students are either self-funded or subsidized by a company. Are there any particular lenders you feel offer competitive loans to incoming students? We don't have a preferred lender list, but there are three primary lenders that our students borrow through: MBA Loans, the Access Group, and Citibank. They all have different terms and conditions and each one may be attractive to a student in a particular situation. For instance, Citibank has no upfront fees -- there's no cost to borrowing the money. So if a student knows that they will take their signing bonus and pay down that loan as soon as they graduate, that may be an attractive loan for them. How does Cornell treat married couples? Does a spouse, for example, gain access to the placement office and receive help in finding a job? The University has a Human Resources office that is a tremendous resource for nonstudent spouses. They can also get an I.D. card, which will enable them to use the library, athletic facilities, and participate in a lot of the other activities that the students are allowed to participate in at the university level. At the Johnson School, we really try to embrace spouses and incorporate them into the community. Does that include allowing them to audit or receive a discounted rate on classes? No, they don't get free tuition or an ability to attend classes for free. But, they're certainly welcome at any of the presentations and lectures that we have. Does the Johnson School increase its aid to students who are married and moving to Ithaca for two years? We're always sensitive to individual students' needs. But, we don't make an across-the-board adjustment for married students -- we do that on a case-by-case basis. We would make an adjustment for health care and the increase in the cost of their living expenses. Certainly, couples with children have expenses above and beyond what a single student would have. Does the school have a day-care center for those students who have children? We don't have a day-care center, but the Joint-Ventures Club -- our couples club -- has, in the past, organized day-care activities or child-care activities on a revolving basis. In addition, Tompkins County has a wide variety of day care programs for young children. The best overall source of information is the Day Care and Child Development Council of Tompkins County (607/273-0259). And Work and Family Services, a division of University Human Resource Services (607/255-3649), provides information and other resources to the Cornell community related to child-care and parenting issues. There are five child-care and preschool facilities operated by the university or sponsored by members of the Cornell community. What is the one piece of advise you would tell applicants to keep in mind when financially planning for their MBA degree? Plan for your educational expenses as soon as you decide you're going to go back to school. When you begin preparing to apply to schools, begin preparing financially to attend schools as well. Set up a budget, begin to save some of your current earnings, pay down on your credit cards, get rid of consumer indebtedness, and make sure your credit history is clean. Begin to adjust your lifestyle in many steps so that when you're a student, it won't be a shock to lose that steady income. It's as simple as that. Thanks much, Ann, for your insights into how the Cornell Johnson School's financial-aid process works. All right. Thank you, Nadav. If you'd like to learn more about Cornell's Johnson School financial aid program, you can visit the school's Web site at: http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/admissions/costs  Nadav Enbar  | | Learn about your online education options |
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