Financial Aid Varies In Grad Schools

Harvard Business School evidently believes its students should lead a more plush lifestyle than students at other Harvard graduate schools, judging from the estimated expenses for financial aid candidates.

Harvard Business School allots its financial aid students $1700 per year for miscellaneous expenses, exclusive of room, board, tuition or health care. This compares with $880 per year at the Medical School, $950 at the Law School, and $1000 at the Kennedy School of Government.

Each graduate school differs--sometimes notably--in the amount of funds it allocates as "miscellaneous expense money" for financial aid students.

Financial aid administrators explain that there are several reasons for these discrepancies.

"Some people say we're a little too generous," Anne J. McDonough, assistant director of admissions at the Business School, said yesterday. "But when we consider total costs to live here, we have to look at a lot of quirky things, like travel for jobs, insurance on cars, relocation expenses on graduation, even things like if your wife has to have an incredible amount of teethwork done," she added.

Russell A. Simpson, director of financial aid at the Law School, said he was not surprised that the Business School's student expense account exceeded their own by some $750.

"The Business School only funds financial aid student for two years, as opposed to three and four year programs in other grad schools," he said. Besides that, there are very few scholarship funds at the Business School, while 40 per cent--of 550--of our students are on aid."

William A. O'Neil, director of financial aid at the Kennedy School, attributed discrepancies in living-expenses allocations to student career goals.

"Our people aren't going into business fields where they'll be making great amounts of money, and we have to consider this when figuring out student limits of indebtedness," he said.

Administrators at the different graduate schools said each year their financial aid committees revise the estimated student budget according to inflation levels. The schools, however, are likely to come up with different percentages of inflation, depending on their sources of information.

Simpson said the Law School fashioned its budget from "current Bureau of Labor statistics, cost-of-living increases and annual reports of students." O'Neil said the School of Government simply adjusted its budget using "a 6.5 per cent figure for inflation."

When asked why medical students on financial aid receive one of the lowest expense accounts of any graduate school--$880--James J. Pates '55, director of financial aid for the Medical School, said, "We have an enrollment of 680 students, with 62 per cent of those on financial aid. With those kinds of odds, we're up against the wall for money."