Nine Schools Break $200K Total Cost Barrier by: Marc Ethier on June 21, 2017 | 2 Comments | 32,946 Views June 21, 2017 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit 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 Previous PagePage 2 of 2 1 2 Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.