The Hidden Costs Of The MBA: How Logistics, Loans & Recruiting Shape The Student Experience

A University of Michigan Ross School of Business MBA student is taking aim at a part of the MBA experience that rarely shows up in rankings or employment reports – the systems that quietly shape how students navigate it day to day.

For Caio Martins, a Ross MBA in the Class of 2026, the idea started during recruiting season. Like many MBA students targeting consulting and tech roles, Martins was in the middle of one of the most demanding stretches of the program, juggling interview prep, networking, and coursework.

In the same week he was preparing for a consulting interview, he faced a potential eviction tied to the timing of school funding and expenses. “I believe that it’s not a problem with me,” Martins tells Poets&Quants. “I believe that it’s a more structural problem.”

LOOKING AT THE MBA EXPERIENCE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Michigan Ross MBA student Caio Martins: “We want to measure how students across all backgrounds navigate these systems and where the frictions actually lie”

That moment led him to an independent study focused on what he describes as the logistics and mental demands of the MBA experience – from managing expenses and administrative processes to balancing those pressures alongside recruiting and academics.

Martins, who is from Brazil and says he believes he may be the first Black Brazilian to attend Ross as an MBA student, says his goal is to better understand how students experience the practical side of business school.

“The schools are often optimized for a default profile,” he says. “We want to measure how students across all backgrounds navigate these systems and where the frictions actually lie.”

His research focuses on everyday elements of the MBA that can be easy to overlook – including how students manage housing costs, loan timing, and administrative requirements during high-pressure periods like recruiting.

FROM INTERVIEWS TO A BROADER SURVEY

Martins began the project in December, starting with a series of interviews with students from different backgrounds and financial situations. Those conversations helped shape a broader set of questions about how students manage competing demands on their time and attention.

To explore those patterns at scale, he developed a 30-question survey that asks about financial stress, recruiting pressures, participation in activities, and interactions with administrative systems.

The survey is designed to capture how students make trade-offs throughout the MBA – whether that means taking on additional work, skipping events, or navigating unexpected costs alongside academic and career demands.

BUILDING A LARGER DATASET

Martins has collected more than 200 responses at Ross so far, roughly a quarter of the school’s full-time MBA population. He is now looking to expand the survey to students at other top programs in the coming weeks.

He says the goal is to build a broader picture of how MBA students experience these challenges across schools, rather than focusing on any single program.

“I believe that some issues are related to Ross School,” he says. “But I believe that, because these are design systemic flaws, they appear in other schools as well.”

A STUDY STILL IN PROGRESS

The research is still ongoing, with final analysis to come after the survey closes. But Martins’ faculty adviser, Chris Rider, Thomas C. Kinnear professor and associate professor of entrepreneurial studies at the Ross School, says the work already stands out.

“This is an unusually thoughtful and rigorous study,” Rider wrote in an email to Poets&Quants. “I am optimistic that – if we can get a large representative sample – we can gain valuable insights on how to improve the MBA experience for all students and especially those groups who would benefit most from improvements.”

Martins is now inviting current full-time MBA students to take part in the anonymous survey, which takes about five minutes to complete. He says broader participation will help ensure the results reflect a wide range of experiences across programs.

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