This Is What It Costs To Get An MBA From A Top Business School

AVERAGE COST-OF-LIVING AT A TOP U.S. B-SCHOOL: $24,465 PER YEAR

Tuition and fees are set numbers. The are fixed — static — and knowable. Living expenses are very much not that, fluctuating widely based on everything from macroeconomic conditions to personal habits. Any total cost number posted by a B-school already contains charges for things like health insurance, MBA case fees, transportation, computers, books, and services — and many of these carry asterisks; this was especially true during the coronavirus pandemic, when some business schools reduced expenses estimates based on the suddenly remote nature of instruction and coursework, some increased them nominally, and others made no adjustments at all. Living expenses are even harder to accurately estimate, given the infinite variables of student life.

But B-schools’ total cost number incorporates cost-of-living estimates — basically, room and board — and those are fixed numbers. From school to school, they range widely in 2023, from more than $15K to just under $40K at the 27 B-schools in this article. Importantly, however, unlike tuition, B-schools’ living expenses projections can and often do go down. The range of fluctuation in the five years from 2019 to 2023 is up 40% (Washington Foster School of Business) to down 14.5% (Texas McCombs). Last year we calculated the range from 2018 to 2022 to be up 33% to down 10.4%.

Stanford GSB once again has the highest tally for living expenses, at $38,724, but that number itself is the low end of a huge range of potential cost faced by a Stanford student. (More on that below.) On the other end of the scale is the cost provided by Indiana Kelley: $15,446. So the difference between living for nine months in Palo Alto and Bloomington is more than $23K.

The average living expense cost for a top-10 school is $27,598, up 4.8% from $26,331 last year. The average for all 27 schools is significantly less: $24,465. The number of schools with costs above $30K is four, up from three last year; the number above $25K is 12, up from eight. And the number below $20K is seven, same as last year.

HIGHEST ESTIMATED LIVING EXPENSES AT THE LEADING MBA PROGRAMS

2023 P&Q Rank	School	2023 Living Expenses	2022 Living Expenses	Y-O-Y Change	Y-O-Y %
3	Stanford GSB	$‎ 38,724	$‎ 36,198	$‎ 2,526	7.0%
5	Harvard Business School	$‎ 32,600	$‎ 31,390	$‎ 1,210	3.9%
9	Dartmouth (Tuck)	$‎ 31,620	$‎ 30,215	$‎ 1,405	4.7%
17	Southern California (Marshall)	$‎ 30,410	$‎ 26,980	$‎ 3,430	12.7%
20	Washington (Foster)	$‎ 29,668	$‎ 21,248	$‎ 8,420	39.6%
8	Yale SOM	$‎ 28,266	$‎ 25,200	$‎ 3,066	12.2%
15	New York (Stern)	$‎ 28,242	$‎ 28,242	None	None
25	Georgetown (McDonough)	$‎ 26,578	$‎ 24,822	$‎ 1,756	7.1%
10	UC-Berkeley (Haas)	$‎ 26,416	$‎ 26,416	None	None
1	Pennsylvania (Wharton)	$‎ 26,028	$‎ 22,887	$‎ 3,141	13.7%

Across the last two years at the 15 schools for which we have available data, the average increase in cost-of-living grew $2,723. The biggest jump was at Washington Foster, which grew its cost by
$8,420, or 39.6%, to $29,668; the smallest increase was at Rice Jones, which upped its cost just $477 (1.9%) to $25,014. See page 5 for living expense cost details.

Seven schools made no year-to-year change to their cost-of-living totals: Northwestern Kellogg, Berkeley Haas, Columbia, Michigan Ross, NYU Stern, UNC Kenan-Flagler, and Washington Olin. And five schools actually reduced their costs, led by a 14.5% reduction (to $17,270, second-lowest among 27 schools) at Texas McCombs. The others:

• MIT Sloan -$2,183 to $21,694 (9.1%)
• Cornell Johnson -$1,462 to $18,554 (7.3%)
• UCLA Anderson -$350 to $24,850 (1.4%)
• Indiana Kelley -$10 to $15,446 (0.1%)

Over five years from 2019 to 2023, average growth in cost-of-living at 24 schools was $3,523, or 16.5%. Only two schools reduced their costs in that span: Sloan by $4,966 (18.6%) and Texas McCombs by $1,100 (6%).

The biggest growth in those five years occurred at Washington Foster (up $8,420 to $29,668; Foster had not increased its living expenses cost in the four years prior), with Dartmouth Tuck close behind with a 39% increase to $31,620. Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business grew its estimate to live in Pittsburgh by $5,538, or 32%, to $22,860.

MARRIED STUDENTS WITH CHILDREN: BEWARE

Through 2022, Chicago Booth hadn’t changed its room-and-board cost for four years; this year they notched it up to $26,010, a 17.2% increase. Similarly, Columbia has not adjusted its living expenses cost in four years ($24,822); and Rice Jones’ cost had been static for four cycles before the Houston school increased it by about 2% to $25,014 in 2023. Northwestern Kellogg and Emory Goizueta Business School only increased their costs in 2022 after years of freezes.

Some schools, meanwhile, make important distinctions between single and married students — and the cost difference can be enormous. Stanford GSB, for example, and perhaps most notably, puts the cost for single students at $38,724 and married students at $64,416, a more than $25K difference. That puts the total two-year cost for an MBA at Stanford for a married student over $300K. At Harvard Business School, living expenses are $22,230 for a single student and $33,210 for a married one, making the difference for two years in Cambridge the difference between $231,276 and $278,680 — and it gets even worse if you have children: married with one child brings the total to $309,736; married with two kids, a whopping $323,004.

It must also be noted that estimates of what it will actually cost to live in the cities in which these schools operate are almost certainly low. According to apartmentlist.com, living expenses in Boston average $2,769 monthly rent for a studio, $3,524 for a one-bedroom apartment, and $4,489 for a two-bedroom apartment. And in other major cities:

• Chicago: studio $1,891, one-bedroom apartment $2,388, two-bedroom apartment $2,931.
• New York: studio $3,678, one-bedroom apartment $4,624, two-bedroom apartment $5,902.
• Los Angeles: studio $2,265, one-bedroom apartment $3,005, two-bedroom apartment $4,189.

DON’T BE DISMAYED BY THE BIG COSTS

The return on investment of an MBA, particularly from a top business school, is well-established. By some estimates, over a 35-year career, an MBA from a top-50 B-sch0ol will make $5.7 million, or well over $2 million more than someone with only a business undergraduate degree. In 2022, the average starting salary for MBA graduates of 17 leading U.S. schools was $147,648, up $12,550 or 9.3%, from the year before. As we await employment reports for the Class of 2023, due this fall, we feel certain that number will rise.

It’s also important in all this talk of huge tuition bills and the ever-growing cost of a full-time MBA to note that every business school in this story — and every other one not mentioned here — offers scholarships, fellowships, and other aid to admits, often without those admits having to apply separately for it. Both Harvard and Stanford estimate that each year approximately half of their MBA students receive fellowship funds, with the average award around $42,000 annually or $84,000 over two years at both schools. Every school has some amount of aid available; many schools have multiple streams of potential award money.

And then there are the other options for graduate business education. Specialized master’s programs abound that are shorter in duration, easier to get into, and cheaper. If you’re fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree and don’t want to work the requisite five to seven years before getting an MBA, master’s in management programs have always been a popular route in Europe and are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. And online MBA programs offer the flexibility to continue working while you study, while also being more accessible in terms of entrance exams — and on the whole much, much cheaper.

See the next pages for tuition, living expenses, and total cost data at the leading U.S. business schools.