A new scholarship program at the Yale School of Management will reduce tuition costs for several Masters of Business Administration students from India as a part of a broader initiative to distinguish the institution as the most global among its peer business schools.
The Global Leaders from India program will cover at least half the cost of tuition for as many as five full-time MBA students. According to the School’s website, all Indian applicants to the School’s MBA program will be automatically considered for the merit scholarship, which will then be awarded to the candidates deemed the strongest based on academic, professional and leadership factors. The new scholarship program comes six years after the school set a goal to become the most internationally focused business school in America, according to SOM Deputy Dean for Academic Programs David Bach.
“For U.S. institutions to remain the magnets for talent that they have been for the last half century, the educational experience here has to connect them meaningfully with economic opportunity no matter where that may reside,” said Anjani Jain, also SOM deputy dean for academic programs. “Recently, the faster growth of economic opportunity will be outside of the developed world. For institutions — especially inside the United States — to remain a draw for global education, the content will have to connect directly with the locus of the opportunity.”
Indian students are consistently either the largest or second-largest contingent of non-U.S. students enrolled in the MBA program, according to Jain.
The SOM already has similar scholarship initiatives for students from other parts of the world, including for students from Africa, Latin America, East Asia and the Middle East. SOM Assistant Dean for Admissions Bruce DelMonico said the India scholarship was established, in part, to make the amount of scholarship funding available specifically for Indian students comparable to that for students from China. The school also draws many applicants from China, he said.
According to DelMonico, the SOM has been able to increase its scholarship funds due to growing class sizes and emphasis from the administration on reallocating funding to scholarships. Class sizes have grown from the “low-200s to mid-300s” over the last eight years, which has contributed to a great nexus of funds for SOM, he said. DelMonico added that SOM Dean Edward Snyder has also prioritized moving funds from the School’s Loan Forgiveness Program to scholarship programs.
Aashna Mehra SOM ’19, a student from India and an SOM admissions ambassador, said she thinks the scholarship will be a “huge draw” for students deciding between SOM and other comparable business schools. She added that prospective students from India occasionally reach out to her to inquire about the availability of scholarship funding.
Mehra added that she believes an increase in scholarships reinforces the “ethos of the institution,” which works to emphasize nontraditional career paths such as nonprofit work. This element of the SOM’s mission sets it apart from peer institutions, she said.
SOM administrators interviewed by the News emphasized that the scholarship serves as a piece of the SOM’s larger commitment to creating a global educational environment.
In addition to its scholarships for international students, the school partners with 29 institutions in other countries. Students can take week-long courses at those partner schools as part of the School’s Global Network Weeks program, and Global Virtual Teams connect SOM students with other students and faculty across the world in the classroom.
Bach said that the SOM’s goals came from “a realization that business is global: that our students have to work across borders, they have to be able to work with people from all cultures and all backgrounds.”
Still, Bach acknowledged that, though SOM is the most global business school in the country, many business schools outside of the U.S. are “more global in perspective” and welcome higher proportions of international students than Yale does.
45 percent of students in the class of 2020 hold non-U.S. passports.
Asha Prihar | asha.prihar@yale.edu .