How Much Does A Top MBA Now Cost? Nine Schools Are In The $200K Club - Poets&Quants

When last we checked, nine schools had joined the exclusive club that charges MBA students more than $200,000 for their degree. A year and a half later, that club, somewhat surprisingly, has no new members. But that will certainly change in the next year or two, as a handful of schools are standing at the threshold. By fall of 2019, expect the $200K Club to have a dozen members or more.

Meanwhile, the cost of an MBA — including tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses — has continued to rise at every top school, usually by 4% to 5% — and, in one case, by double digits.

Stanford Graduate School of Business remains the most expensive MBA experience in the land, at a two-year cost of $231,672, partly due to the high cost of living in Palo Alto, which the school estimates to be $32,712 annually. That’s also the biggest room-and-board bill among the 23 schools on our list (see the full list on page 2). After Stanford, rounding out the five costliest MBA programs are NYU’s Stern School of Business ($226,232), The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania ($223,800), MIT’s Sloan School of Management ($223,140), and Columbia Business School ($221,956).

FOUR SCHOOLS KNOCKING ON $200K CLUB DOOR

The first school to break the $200K barrier was NYU Stern, four years ago. In 2016, Stanford, Columbia, and Wharton joined Stern, and the next year, Harvard Business School made its move into the $200K ranks, along with Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, MIT Sloan, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. But in the next two cycles, including the incoming cohorts of the fall of 2017 and the fall of 2018, no new programs have ramped up to $200K.

A few are close, however. Four schools charge in excess of $190,000 for an MBA: UCLA’s Anderson School of Management ($197,398), Yale SOM ($194,330), UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business ($193,196), and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business ($190,048). All could conceivably make the leap to $200K for those entering in the fall of 2019. Moreover, another five schools cost $180K or more, led by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, at $188,770.

It goes without saying that no school saw a decrease in total cost between 2017 and 2018 — that’s just not how this works (though it is not entirely unprecedented — see Duke Fuqua from 2015 to 2016). These numbers almost always go up. But sometimes they go up more in some places than others. This year, MIT Sloan saw the biggest jump, at 11%. (Noteworthy: In 2017 MIT had the most modest cost increase of any school, just 2.6% over the year before.) UCLA Anderson saw the smallest jump in cost, just 1.6%; the average for all 23 schools was 4.3%.

LIVING LA VIDA MBA

About those living expenses. Stanford is among the schools that break down their cost of attendance in minute detail, from “living allowance” to books and supplies to “materials & program fee.” But even though Stanford is already the most expensive MBA experience, it could be even more so for non-single students: Get married and your living allowance balloons to $53,001 from $32,712, a difference of more than $20,000. Transportation costs for married versus single students are quadrupled, to $4,068. In short, if you’re in the Stanford MBA programs and you have a spouse, your total cost isn’t $231,672 — it’s $278,352. That’s almost a new club entirely — a $300K Club.

This is to say nothing of whether Stanford’s estimate on the cost of living in Palo Alto is accurate. It’s not hard to make the case that it isn’t. But among the schools examined by P&Q, Stanford may be the most accurate in estimating living expenses simply by virtue of being the most expensive. Many other schools’ estimates are definitely arguable: Dartmouth Tuck, for example, suggests students can survive on just over $16,000 annually, while Northwestern Kellogg reports a room-and-board tally of $17,100. And can anyone really be expected to survive in New York City on the $21,375 that Columbia allots for its MBA students?

NYU Stern was the first school to break the $200K barrier; now nine schools charge that or more for a MBA. NYU Stern photo

HELP ON THE WAY AS COSTS KEEP CLIMBING

A Stanford MBA costs the most overall but the highest tuition belongs to Wharton, at $78,948. Looking only at out-of-state tuition, nine schools have annual tuition over $70,000, including Columbia ($74,400), MIT ($74,200), and Harvard ($73,440). The lowest tuition of the 23 schools was at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, which charges $48,333. The average for all schools is $66,514.

Bottom line: A MBA from a top school is not cheap. The average total cost to attend one of the programs in the chart below is $196,067, up from $185,747 last year — and up from about $168,000 three years ago. The elite of the elite have seen their costs jump considerably in the last two years: Stanford from $210,838 to $231,672 (9.9%), Wharton from $200,908 to $223,800 (11.4%), NYU Stern from $206,474 to $226,232 (9.6%), Harvard from $196,800 to $218,248 (10.9%), Columbia from $199,648 to $221,956 (11.2%), and MIT the most of all, from $196,028 to $223,148, or 13.8%.

Fortunately, financial aid is available for many. At Stanford GSB, the average fellowship is about $35,000 per year or $70,000 in total awards; at Harvard, it’s even more: $40,000 per year, or $80,000 total. UCLA Anderson has 625 scholarships, grants, fellowships, and awards; UC-Berkeley annually spreads millions around its relatively small MBA  cohort.

And beyond scholarships, there’s the fact that a MBA continues to be a reliable magnifier of salary potential. According to a 2018 survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council, 2016 and 2017 grads saw their post-MBA salaries rise by a median of $40,000. Among respondents, 82% agreed that B-school increased their earning power. The schools with the best ROI and starting salaries? According to a P&Q analysis earlier this year, it’s all the ones you see in the chart below. HBS grads, for example, now average more than $160,000 right out of the gate.

DON’T MISS NINE SCHOOLS BREAK $200K TOTAL COST BARRIER and THE LEAST (AND MOST) EXPENSIVE TOP ONLINE MBA PROGRAMS 

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