Everyone dreams of being there. It’s a different feeling altogether to be an alumnus of HBS or Stanford GSB or MIT Sloan. You can boast it to your peers that you are an Ivy Leaguer. But is it everybody’s cup of cake to be there? As if the high GMAT score requirement and superb application essay requirements were not enough, the cost of MBA at these business schools are staggeringly high, often making it very difficult for even the deserving candidates to fulfill their MBA dream.

Though, financial aid is available in form of loans, scholarships and fellowships, it is not enough to finance the MBA program fully. The salary figures are often seen as the means to pay off the loan and the interest but nobody thinks of other financial commitments and the possibility of not getting a high profile job with six figure salary.

Just for the records, let us take a look at the cost of MBA at the best business schools in the country.

The cost of MBA given here includes the tuition as well as the estimated cost of living. Experience of the b-school students says that usually the cost of MBA is at least 10 to 15 percent higher than the projected cost, thanks to the conservative lifestyle that the business schools expect the students to live. Moreover, there are certain fine print costs that surface only after a semester or two, and you have to incur them to enhance your MBA learning experience.

Google currently has eight figure search results for the simple query, “Is an MBA worth it?” I am not a Google analytics expert who’s interested in marketing statistics for these terms. Like any other MBA aspirant, I am too baffled about whether MBA from a top international business school, probably in the US, is the right choice!

The inforgraphic I came across on Boston Innovation goes a long way in solving some of my dilemmas, the major being: starting my own business or going in for MBA (leaving my job and giving up the opportunity to earn $60,000). Starting a B2B online venture would involve less than half the cost of what it takes to study in an elite business school and there are many who actually go headlong into starting their own business. They not only learn the management strategies on the job, but also devise new ones from their experience. Read more…

In between the anxiety over the GMAT exam and the preparation, getting into the right college and the business school admission procedure, I ended up thinking about the amount I have already spent on the entire MBA application process, without a single hope that I will indeed make it to the one of the top 20 business schools in the world.

Let us take a look:

GMAT application fee is $250, which is not all that affordable, but come on…if you get 700+ score, it can be your lottery ticket to the best MBA programs. This is the only consolation for spending $250. Another smaller consolation is that your GMAT scores are valid for five years. So you can divide the cost as $50 per year. Does that help?

GMAC, the official GMAT council, sends your official GMAT scores to five business school program for free. For every additional school that you want to send your scores to, you have to pay $28 extra. Naturally, I could not just rely upon five MBA programs. Therefore, sending the scores to another 15 MBA programs, cost $420.

Now starts the real show. The application fee for various business schools added on to overall cost of MBA application and preparation. The application fee for various MBA universities is as follows:

• HBS: $235
• Stanford GSB: $250
• Wharton: $250
• LSB: $285 (after conversion to dollar)
• University of Columbia: $250
• NYU Stern: $215
• Rice College: $70
• UCLA MBA : $175
• University of Illinois: $70

These are just nine out of 15 colleges I applied to and you can calculate the total expenditure in the form of application fee only. The preparation costs added to the entire thing and before I knew it, I had already spent close to $1800 on application process alone. (trust me the actual cost was closer to $3000, as I have not included the cost of applications to some other universities)

You may say that if I am grudging spending $3K for the application, what about the tuition fee, if I do get selected for a reputed MBA program? Well, I am not exactly grudging these costs, but just putting across a point in relation to the high cost of application. The cost of education and everything related to it has indeed shot high, making it difficult for the parents to get the best education for their kids.

MBA has become a lucrative degree again as the markets are improving and corporate organizations have resumed recruiting MBA graduates, providing them with high remuneration and various perks. The best business schools are located in the US, namely Stanford GBS, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, NYC Stern, Dartmouth, Yale etc. More than 2,00,000 students from different parts of the world apply to these business schools with the hope of making it to the best amongst them – a shortcut way of striking it rich in the near future. Read more…