P&Q’s Must Reads: What It Costs To Get An MBA From A Top Business School

Hello everyone  — Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

No. 1: What It Costs To Get An MBA From A Top Business School

If you want an elite two-year MBA from a top business school in the United States, and you don’t want to pay in excess of $200,000 for the privilege, you have very few options — and those options are dwindling every year.

Twenty-two U.S. B-schools in the Poets&Quants top 25 charge admits to their full-time MBA programs at least $100K annually, according to a P&Q analysis, up from 19 schools at this time last year. In 2022, there were 15 B-schools whose MBAs cost that much; in 2018, there were only nine. The five most expensive MBAs in the U.S. carry price tags of more than a quarter million dollars.

We’ve crunched all the tuition dollars for the top U.S. MBAs in this data story, and you can find it on our homepage.

No. 2: The Best MBA Alumni Networks 

MBA circles love to tell you that your network is your net worth. But, how do you measure the value of a business school’s alumni network?

This week, Fortune published its attempt to tackle this very question leaning on two variables: size and stature. With size, Fortune based 60% of its weight on school size. More specifically, it gave equal 20% weights to class sizes for the classes of 2021, 2022, and 2023. The remaining 40% was devoted to a Fortune 1000 score – “The number of alumni who are now C-suite executives at Fortune 1000 companies.”

You can see how the top schools fared with these metrics, and our analysis on why it might not be the most valuable measure out there, in this article which is in our trending tab.

No. 3:  Study Says TopConsulting Firms Are ‘No Help At All’ 

According to a new study of 702 bosses and project managers, 84 percent of those that worked with the so-called big three management consultancy firms found them to have been “no help at all. Three percent believed they actually hindered a project.

Only 13 percent of respondents said the big beasts of management consultancy were more of a help than a hindrance.

That may be a big surprise to MBAs with their sites on the MBB. Find the full study on our homepage.

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week. You can find them all in our admissions hub, accessible from the main menu.

First up: MBA Application Final Touches: Top Tips and Tricks. Ex AdCom members share what committees look for in candidates.

Next: GMAT Preparation For Busy Test Takers. Menlo Coaching has prepared a comprehensive guide for those preparing for the GMAT Focus edition.

Finally: The ‘Introduce Yourself’ MBA Essay. This article, up now on our homepage, invites you to ask what you’ll bring to the school community.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert school seekers to our events tab from our main menu. There, you’ll find all the upcoming admissions events for a range of degrees and programs including full-time and online MBAs, specialized masters, entrepreneurship and more. Registration is free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening.