Third Of A Million: True Cost of A Top MBA

School	2011 Average Forgone Pay	2011 Recommended Budget	Total Cost Of Getting An MBA
Harvard Business School	$90,400*	$168,000	$348,800
Stanford GSB	$88,750*	$174,162	$351,662
Pennsylvania (Wharton)	$74,000*	$178,400	$326,400
Dartmouth (Tuck)	$74,000*	$168,100	$316,200
MIT (Sloan)	$74,000*	$165,264	$313,264
Northwestern (Kellogg)	$73,960	$162,458	$310,378
Columbia Business School	$73,425*	$175,740	$322,590
Chicago (Booth)	$72,320*	$170,976	$315,608
USC (Marshall)	$67,000	$159,600	$293,600
UC-Berkeley (Haas)	$66,345	$156,244	$288,934
NYU (Stern)	$65,972	$165,340	$297,284
Texas-Austin (McCombs)	$65,033	$134,280	$264,346
Virginia (Darden)	$64,325*	$151,000	$279,650
Duke (Fuqua)	$64.087	$143,718	$271,892
UNC (Kenan-Flagler)	$63,850*	$145,656	$273,356
Cornell (Johnson)	$63,640*	$147,320	$274,600
Yale School of Management	$63,126	$157,790	$277,790
Michigan (Ross)	$62,000	$147,448	$271,448
UCLA (Anderson)	$59,144	$153,174	$271,462
Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)	$58,200	$154,000	$270,400
Wisconsin-Madison	$54,653	$86,074	$195,380
Georgetown (McDonough)	$52,618	$148,880	$254,116
Vanderbilt (Owen)	$48,338	$175,608	$272,284
Indiana (Kelley)	$46,189	$126,080	$218,458

Source: Business schools reporting to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. An asterisk indicates an estimate based on previously reported data.

Notes: To calculate the total cost of getting an MBA, P&Q multiplied the annual forgone pay by two to account for the opportunity cost of being out of work for two years. We then added that total to the school’s recommended two-year budget which includes tuition, required fees, as well as room and board. In all cases, these are conservative estimates. They assume no increase in the recommended budget for the second year of business school, and most observers believe these recommended numbers are 10% to 20% below what a typical MBA will spend in a two-year program. We used recommended budgets for non-residents at public universities where tuition may be slightly lower for residents.

DON’T MISS: STANFORD MBAS SNAG HIGHEST 2011 SALARIES or MBA JOBS BACK FOR CLASS OF 2011

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