Hello everyone! We’re excited to start a fresh week of blog-posts with our series MBA Mondays.

Preparing for your MBA dream comes with its own set of challenges which could be resigning from your high-paying secure job, moving out of your country to experience a new culture and leaving your friends & family miles behind. While the top-flight MBA programmes provide tremendous learning curve & valuable educational experience, there is one common question that many aspiring applicants are trying to answer: How do I obtain funding assistance for my MBA studies?

Today, the cost of an MBA program at a good business school could be anywhere between $75,000 – $120,000. When you add the living, travel and other misc. expenses to this tuition fees, your total budget for the course scales up.

The good news is that there are a bunch of available alternatives through which you can pay up for your MBA education. Let us have a look at these:

Bank Loans

Despite the economic downturn, the students from U.S. are not bound to face much of a problem while applying for bank loans. The key area that the banks look at while giving loans to students is their credit history. So if you have a decent credit history, chances are banks would look upon you as a stable investment option.

One of the starting steps in this category is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA. Submitting FAFSA provides you visibility among the financial aid offices of many schools. Further application information about federal loans for citizens and permanent residents of United States is available on their website at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/.

But FAFSA is not applicable for international students although some years ago international students who applied with a credit worthy U.S. co-signer were able to get loans. So if you are an international student planning to go to the U.S. to pursue your MBA what are realistic financing options for you?

Your Business School

There are many business schools who have their own loan programs and their application process usually starts along with the admissions where details about the public & private loans are described. Students can have further discussions about the process of a loan program with the respective school’s student financial aid office. Usually there isn’t much difference between the loan application procedure for international and local applicants in these schools.

For instance, in a recent article on student loans by QS TOP M.B.A., Alexis Mellon of the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University had said, “We have ensured that the Duke MBA loan program has always been accessible to international applicants on the same terms as it is for our domestic [US] applicants.

Scholarships/Fellowships available in the School and other Bodies

Another option that students can explore is the need/merit based scholarships and grants assistance offered by most business schools & other institutions.

Institutions like Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Harvard Business School, Yale School of Management etc. award merit based scholarships and grants to select students for their programs.

If you have faced real financial problems in your life, need based scholarships are the right option for you. Do make sure that you describe your situation to the school and how you’ve managed to study and achieve despite limited monetary resources. Similarly, if you are applying for a merit based scholarship, explain your academic and professional accomplishments in detail as these would make you stand out from other applicants in the pool. Students who have attained high GMAT scores and have outstanding academic record naturally have a better chance of securing financial aid.

Students can also research the Internet to find out various sources of grants within their home country. There are many private corporate bodies, social organizations and even employers who offer grants & scholarships for academic studies to deserving candidates.

To find out more about private scholarships you can log-on to the website Fastweb.com.

Other than the above, you can get partial funds for your MBA through assistantships, small part-time jobs and internships at the end of the semesters.

To summarize, the message for all students is that plenty of funds are available for both domestic and international students. The sources of funds may differ based on your track record, your achievements and your home country. It is just that you have to apply the relevant effort to find & get secure funds from right financing sources that exist out there.