Stanford offers $160,000 to MBA grads who agree to work in under-served Midwest areas

Stanford University has launched a fellowship that covers tuition and other costs for master-of-business-administration students who agree to work in under-served areas in the Midwest. The Stanford USA MBA Fellowship pays for tuition and associated fees—about $160,000 over two years—for students with ties to the Midwest and who are in need of financial assistance. Students must agree that within two years of graduation they will hold a professional position for two years that contributes to economic development in under-served areas in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota or Wisconsin.

To be eligible, students must "demonstrate strong ties to, and a commitment to the economic development of" one of the states, and have on the following: current residency in the region; prior residency for a minimum of three consecutive years in one of the states; a high school diploma from the region; or experiences that demonstrate a strong commitment to, and interest in, the development of the region. The application deadline is Jan. 10, 2017.

Simone Hill, an assistant director for MBA admissions at Stanford, told Zara Kessler of Bloomberg News that the program seeks “people who are interested in bringing everything that they learned back to their region to develop it. So 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.”