Alison Damast from BusinessWeek: With tuition for a top MBA program averaging $150,000 for two years, and nearly 90% of students taking out loans, business school is increasingly becoming a more expensive proposition. The average debt for a student attending one of the top 20 business schools hovers around $80,000, according to Graduate Leverage, a student loan consolidation and debt management company in Boston. Yet every year, a highly selective group of students manages to snag a full-ride scholarship or fellowship. Needless to say, they’re among the most competitive awards in the management education sector and many top business schools offer only a handful each year.

There’s very little luck involved in getting a full ride. The students who get them tend to be all-around superstars, outstanding at everything from work to their involvement in the community, says Linda Abraham, an admissions consultant for Accepted.com. And they work their applications to the max. Read the rest of this entry »