If you’re from the Midwest and you don’t mind returning there after securing your Stanford University MBA, then Stanford may just pay for your degree — to the tune of $160,000. Students from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin are all eligible. Stanford groups these states together as an “underserved region.” (Don’t tell the University of Chicago, or Michigan, or Wisconsin, or….)
But that “underserved” designation won’t wound the Midwestern pride of students who are awarded a Stanford USA MBA Fellowship. Or if it does, perhaps they can detail the hurt in their essay — a requirement for the application. The essay asks prospective students to to tell Stanford about “your connection to the Midwest region and about your intended contributions to the region.” The students will have to sharpen their inner editors too: suggested essay length is 400 words. We at 2paragraphs applaud this emphasis on brevity, of course. So too would Abraham Lincoln, who famously used just 272 words in the Gettysburg Address. Including, ironically, these: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…”
