Nine Schools Break $200K Total Cost Barrier

Three years ago, NYU Stern was the first school to break the $200K barrier in total cost for an MBA. File photo

NO SCHOOL POSTED A DECREASE IN TOTAL COST BETWEEN 2016 AND 2017

Most of the most-expensive MBA programs are at private schools, including all of the top nine. But No. 10, UCLA’s Anderson School, is not only the most-expensive public school, it also saw the biggest increase in cost by percentage, rising 13.6% from $170,982 last year to $194,220 — just a shade under that $200K threshold. Other schools with big increases include Wharton (9% to $218,900), Duke Fuqua (9.6% to $184,476, one year after actually posting a decline in total cost), and Harvard (8.5% to $213,600). After Anderson, the next costliest public is UC-Berkeley Haas, which saw a 7.6% increase to $183,342.

No school in the Top 25 posted a decrease in total cost, though Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business came closest, rising 2.3% to $141,920. Most of the schools that saw small increases in total cost — less than 3% — were on the bottom end of the Top 25 list, and therefore more affordable, such as the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business (2.4%, to $152,850), Notre Dame Mendoza (2.9%, to $146,576), and Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management (2.6%, to $179,508). However, one high-cost school, MIT Sloan, also saw only a modest jump in total cost: 2.6%, from $196,028 last year to $201,028.

Indiana Kelley’s total cost increase was the most modest and the school itself is the cheapest in the Top 25, thanks to the lowest annual tuition ($47,127) and the low estimate of what it costs to live for a year in Bloomington, Indiana ($12,708). Even better would be to get in-state tuition, which would drop the total cost of a two-year MBA to just $100,196 — or half the cost of any of the top nine schools. It’s a fun game to play: What is the in-state cost versus the out-of-state at the next-cheapest school, the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business? $113,068 versus $146,028. But at Anderson, the costliest public school, it’s hardly worth the trouble of getting a California driver’s license: $190,862 in-state versus $194,220 out-of-state, a savings of less than $4,000.

DON’T MISS FULL COST OF THE MBA KEEPS RISING and RISING COST OF AN MBA IMPACTING SCHOOL CHOICE FOR APPLICANTS