Joint Degrees Forum

[bballfreak56]

If you get accepted with a joint degree (ex JD/MBA) do you have to pay two tuitions at once, or are they included? Does anybody know?

[tomwatts]

Typically — and this varies somewhat from program to program — for a JD/two-year Masters in anything (Business, Public Policy, whatever), you do a year of one (usually the JD first), then a year of the other (MBA or whatever), then two more years of advanced courses in both, typically with some overlap (so it's a four-year program). Thus, typically, you pay JD rates to the law school the first year, MBA/whatever rates to the other school the second year, and then some fraction of each to each school the third year (e.g. Harvard JD/MBA: "During the upper-level years, students will pay tuition equal to the sum of (i) 65% of the then current Law School tuition and (ii) 40% of the Business School tuition paid in the students’ first year at HBS").

But again, it varies somewhat from program to program, especially if you're doing the JD and MBA at different institutions.

[fakemoney]

I wonder how this works if you're on scholarship

[tomwatts]

I know that you usually have to apply for financial aid at the two schools separately (even if they're in the same institution, e.g. HLS and HBS), but after that, I don't know. I would guess that they do the same sort of percentage-based thing, so if you're on the hook for 65% of law school and 40% of business school, you get 65% of your law school scholarship and 40% of your business school scholarship, but that's just guessing.

Oh, huh. For HLS/HBS (as a prominent example): "Financial aid decisions are made by HLS for the 1L year and for the third year in the program. HBS makes financial aid decisions for the first year at HBS and for the fourth year in the program." I think this sort of thing just varies substantially from school to school.

[TarHeel11]

The answer about what you pay varies from school to school, so you should ask this question of the specific joint degree programs you are interested in. Although, I'm not aware of any programs where you have to pay double tuition.

In the program I did, I paid the tuition rate of whichever school I had more hours for that particular semester. But that's not a universal approach.

Also, I only made one financial aid application each year, not two as someone else said you had to do.