Every so often, a scholarship comes along that’s structured backward from how people expect. The Boustany Foundation MBA Harvard Scholarship is one of them. Most applicants searching for it are looking for something that helps them get into Harvard Business School.
It doesn’t. It’s only available to people who are already in. Understanding that one fact changes how you should actually plan for it.
You cannot apply for this scholarship until you already hold an official offer of admission from the Harvard MBA program. Not an application in progress, not a strong candidacy, an actual acceptance letter. The Boustany Foundation is a private philanthropic organization entirely separate from Harvard, and its scholarship exists downstream of Harvard’s own admissions decision, not as a way to influence it.
That means your real first milestone isn’t the Foundation’s May 31 deadline. It’s getting into Harvard Business School in the first place, through Harvard’s own application rounds, which run across the academic year before your intended start date. Treat gaining admission as the actual competition. The scholarship application that follows is comparatively quick.
Benefits
Once admitted, the scholarship itself is straightforward on paper:
- 75% of tuition fees for the two-year Harvard MBA program
- A required two-month internship at the Boustany Foundation’s office in Monaco, unpaid, but with travel, food, and accommodation fully covered
- A single award, given to one candidate, once every two years
That last point matters more than it might seem. This isn’t a scholarship pool with dozens of recipients. It’s one person, selected once every two cycles, from a pool of applicants who’ve already cleared Harvard’s own bar.
The competitive filtering happens twice, once through Harvard admissions, and again through the Foundation’s own selection.
Eligibility Criteria
The Foundation states plainly that the scholarship is open to candidates of any nationality, and it is. But priority goes to candidates of Lebanese descent under the Foundation’s founding charter, a detail that gets left out of most scholarship-listing summaries entirely. Non-Lebanese candidates do apply and do win, but walking in without understanding that ancestry is an explicit, stated factor in selection means walking in with a skewed sense of your own odds.
Beyond that, there’s no separate academic bar published by the Foundation itself. The expectation is simply an excellent academic background and considerable promise, which in practice means whatever got you admitted to Harvard’s MBA program in the first place: a strong GMAT score, a compelling professional record, and a competitive application.
Scholarships Requirements
Unlike most scholarship processes, there’s no separate essay or personal statement requested. What the Foundation asks for is narrower:
- A CV with a photograph attached
- Your GMAT scores, as submitted for your Harvard application
- Your official Harvard Business School acceptance letter
That’s genuinely it, at the initial stage. The interview, if you’re shortlisted, is where the fuller evaluation happens.
How to Apply
- Apply to and gain admission from Harvard Business School’s MBA program, through Harvard’s own process, well before the Foundation’s deadline even becomes relevant
- Once admitted, submit your CV, GMAT scores, and acceptance letter to [email protected]
- Wait to hear whether you’re shortlisted
- If shortlisted, complete an interview, possibly more than one, with the Foundation
- One candidate is selected, with the deadline for candidacy falling on May 31 and the award announced in June, ahead of the autumn intake
The Mistake Worth Avoiding
The most common misstep isn’t a weak CV or a low GMAT score. It’s applicants discovering this scholarship and treating it as a reason to apply to Harvard, rather than something to think about only after admission is already secured. If you’re weighing whether this scholarship makes Harvard worth pursuing, that’s the wrong question.
Pursue Harvard admission on its own merits first. If you get in, this becomes one more thing worth a fifteen-minute email, not a factor that should shape your MBA application strategy months in advance.
Always confirm current deadlines and application details directly through the Boustany Foundation’s official website and [email protected] before applying.