Pursuing a Graduate Masters is an investment in time and money, so it’s important to research your financing options early. I’ll walk you through some possible routes to consider, but it’s worth bearing in mind that our students typically fund their LBS experience through multiple sources. It’s perfectly reasonable, even recommended, to pool your resources!
Scholarships
We have a variety of scholarships that will be awarded after an offer has been made to join a Graduate Masters at London Business School. As much as we’d like to, we cannot award them to all incoming students, so it is a competitive process. For this reason, we advise against relying on a scholarship for your funding plan.
Most of the portfolio is made up of merit scholarships and offer holders will automatically be considered for any that they are eligible for. These scholarships are awarded solely on the strength of a programme application (CV, GMAT, interview etc.), so do keep this in mind when preparing to submit it.
Alongside the merit scholarships, we have need-based scholarships. These are reserved to support candidates coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who may not be able to start their business school journey without additional financial support. To assess eligibility, a short application is required and will be considered in conjunction with the strength of an initial programme application.
The London Business School Bursary is available to candidates across all four Graduate Masters.
The Laidlaw Women’s Leadership Fund, aiming to help grow the proportion of women in senior leadership roles, offers a full-fee scholarship to four women on the Masters in Management.
Savings
If you have savings set aside for a life-changing experience, this might be a worthy cause to put it towards! Some students might also receive support from family members.
‘I looked at quite a few different funding possibilities, to help finance my MiM program at LBS. While I spent a year working after obtaining my bachelor’s degree, I did not want to use all of my savings on tuition fees. I made a spreadsheet of my budget with all my costs (tuition, housing, living, etc.) to get an idea of how much I would be spending throughout the year. In the end, I used a combination of my savings and a student loan to cover the costs. Additionally, I found a lot of external scholarships that are designed to help students completing their masters abroad. Though finding and applying for them was time-consuming, it was definitely worth it, and has helped reduce the size of the loan I had to take out.’ – Mads Holstebro, MiM2023
Loans
A large proportion of the community take out loans to fund their programme and there are many to consider. For example, we have relationships with Lendwise and Prodigy Finance who support students across a wide range of nationalities. You should also look into banks or loan providers specific to your country/region.
Sponsorship
This will not apply to everyone considering a Graduate Masters, but it is still something to be aware of. Some companies have a sponsorship policy in place to provide partial or full financial support to existing employees pursuing business education. Often this will come with a commitment to return to the company for a specified number of years, so this is worth researching if you intend to return to your current employer post-LBS. Our Business Development Team can support you in this, starting with ‘4 questions to ask yourself before approaching your employer for sponsorship’.
Funding Tool
Finally, take a look at our Funding Tool which provides a full list of our scholarships and some loan providers. While we have lots of information there for you, you’re bound to find even more options when you do your own fact-finding. Use this as a starting point to supplement your own research.
If you would like to reach out to a member of the Recruitment and Admissions team, send an email to graduatemasters@london.edu.