Study
18.11.2020

Financing your studies: financial aid

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How financial aid at the Hertie School works, what to keep in mind and how to apply.

At the Hertie School, we offer two distinct types of financial support: financial aid and scholarships. In the first of this multi-part series, we’ll tell you all you need to know about financial aid and offer some tips on how to apply for it. Part two will focus on our scholarships.

What is financial aid and how can you apply?

Financial aid refers to a 10% to 75% reduction of the total tuition fees for our master’s programmes, and applicants of all nationalities may apply. Over the last three years, more than half of our students have received a financial aid offer.

Applying for financial aid is straightforward and easy: you need to complete the financial information section of our online application form, select that you wish to apply for financial support and declare your finances. No additional documents are required at this stage.

Declaring your finances

How do you complete the declaration of finances form? Simply indicate the amounts you currently have available or have already secured for the duration of your studies. List your personal savings, any support from your partner or parents (not what they earn or have saved, but what they will support you with), and any scholarships or sponsorships that you are sure to receive.

It is important that you indicate only secured funds for two reasons:

  1. When you join us, we want you to be able to focus on your studies and career development. All worries about financing should be resolved by the time you accept an admission offer. By inserting the respective amounts in our declaration of finances, and using the cost estimates on the same page, you should be able to easily weigh funds available to you against the cost of the programme. Use this part of our application form as an honest self-assessment of your finances.
  2. The allocation of financial aid is in part based on the information you provide in this form.

Allocating financial aid

We award financial aid based on merit and need. Merit is determined by how well an applicant performs during our selection process based on our evaluation criteria (see the selection criteria for the MIA, MPP, MDS and Executive MPA programmes on each admissions page). Financial need refers to your declaration of finances. If you have not yet secured sufficient funds for tuition and living costs during your studies at the Hertie School, you are eligible to receive financial aid.

For many of our applicants, external sources of funding are available, such as loans and salary-sharing agreements. More information on these funding sources can be found here.

Explore additional funding options as soon as possible

Because we want to support as many students as possible, we offer the majority of financial aid in the form of 25% reductions. This means that, in addition to applying for direct funding from the Hertie School, you should also start looking into additional options as early as you can. We partner with a number of funding organisations worldwide and encourage you, as soon as you have received your admission and financial aid offer, to get in touch with our External Funding team to explore opportunities for which you may be eligible.

Apply now!

If you require financial assistance for your studies at the Hertie School, we suggest that you apply before our priority deadlines or sooner rather than later. Of course we will still award financial aid all for applications received up until our final deadlines each year (1 May for the MPP and MIA, 1 June for the MDS and 15 August for the Executive MPA). We look forward to your application!



Read more about financial aid and scholarships here and remember to get a head start on the search for additional sources of funding. Next up in the series: scholarships.

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