A new fellowship at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business (GSB) will cover the cost of an MBA for up to three students. The catch? They must agree to live and work in the Midwest once they graduate.
The fellowship will cover tuition and associated fees at Stanford GSB (approximately $160,000 over the two year program) for up to three MBA students who have financial need and "strong ties" to the Midwest. Within two years of graduation, fellows must return to the Midwest and work for at least two years in a "professional role that will contribute to the region’s economic development," Stanford said. If they don't make it back to the Midwest in that time frame, they'll have to pay back the fellowship.
Students must demonstrate financial need as well as a commitment to the region, which Stanford defines as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
The fellowship is a part of Stanford's USA MBA program, which seeks to increase geographical diversity in their student body as well as expand their impact beyond the Bay Area where roughly 27 percent of their alumni currently reside. This is the first year the program has run, and the fellowship will expand to other areas of the US in the future (likely the Southeast next). Eventually Stanford hopes to fund at least eight fellowships per year.
However, they're starting in the Midwest because of alumni connections and companies in the area, such as General Motors in Detroit, and Eli Lilly & Co. in Indianapolis, according to Bloomberg.
“When we look at our country, and we think about different places where there’s still a lot of room for growth and development, the Midwest was a big part of that,” Simone Hill, an assistant director for MBA admissions at Stanford who's in charge of the program, told Bloomberg.
The fellowship is relatively open in terms of applicants' ties to the Midwest and post-graduation plans. To demonstrate ties to the region, Stanford said fellows could currently live in the Midwest, have previously lived in the Midwest for a few years, graduated from high school in one of the 12 Midwestern states or show significant commitment to development in the region.
After they graduate, it's up to fellows to define how they make a difference in the region. "We don’t have any specific stipulations on what we mean by ‘having an impact,’ because we know there are so many different ways you can do that," Hill added.
Though the tech industry has grown significantly in the region, the potential for Stanford grads to make a difference through business and startups is far greater in the Midwest than in the already-saturated Bay Area. And though there are several top business schools in the region, including University of Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, and University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, Stanford's GSB is currently ranked second in the nation by US News.
Interested? Students will have to apply (and get in) to Stanford for the upcoming school year, and fellows won't be announced until May 2017.
