2006 MBA Programs

The High Price of Admission
This year both the costs and benefits of attending B-school surged. For our top 30 schools, tuition and fees alone were up 15% on average, and the pricetag for a Wharton MBA now approaches $90,000, up nearly $20,000 since 2004. Good thing salaries for grads increased, too. New 2006 MBAs could expect first-year paychecks of about $95,000 on average, an increase of 47% from their pre-MBA days and a huge increase over the 29% MBA pay premium that 2004 grads received. But in narrow economic terms, it may not pay to attend one of the top-ranked schools; a midtier school is a better bet. That's because the likes of Wharton and Harvard tend to attract high earners, making it harder to get a big salary bump at graduation and recoup the investment in an MBA. How hard? For Harvard grads, the breakeven point won't come until 2020, or about 20 years shy of retirement.

Click column heading once to reorder from highest to lowest. Click twice to reorder from lowest to highest.
SCHOOL
TOTAL COST, $
SALARY PREMIUM, $
YEARS TO PAY BACK
Yale 245,708 38,1516.44 
Wisconsin (Madison) 186,799 42,3434.41 
Wharton 328,748 25,77512.75 
Washington U. 205,518 36,3985.65 
Virginia 262,517 29,0989.02 
Vanderbilt 240,596 27,0898.88 
USC 240,557 32,0527.51 
UNC 239,337 31,0567.71 
UCLA 258,551 26,7949.65 
UC Irvine 215,201 30,4777.06 
U. of Washington 193,626 36,7955.26 
Texas-Austin 241,956 25,1939.60 
Stanford 328,062 22,35114.68 
South Carolina (Darla Moore) 165,283 37,6754.39 
Rochester 199,447 38,5685.17 
Rice U. 230,115 31,8697.22 
Ohio State U. 195,848 31,5076.22 
NYU 267,153 33,2868.03 
Notre Dame 190,241 37,6525.05 
Northwestern 289,054 27,18210.63 
MIT 324,305 21,49915.08 
Minnesota (Carlson) 236,680 25,3219.35 
Michigan State University 161,904 40,8043.97 
Michigan 251,437 36,3716.91 
Maryland 202,029 35,3195.72 
Indiana 211,064 31,7976.64 
Harvard 345,401 23,92114.44 
Georgetown 236,903 32,0587.39 
Emory 225,737 42,4715.32 
Duke 258,689 32,9917.84 
Dartmouth 289,633 28,40410.20 
Cornell 253,543 31,9407.94 
Columbia 315,780 26,61011.87 
Chicago 289,473 28,69110.09 
Carnegie Mellon 251,735 36,3936.92 
Buffalo 109,153 21,8395.00 
Brigham Young 133,234 35,0683.80 
Boston University 214,904 29,1957.36 
Boston College 215,587 23,8049.06 
Berkeley 291,805 24,23912.04 
Babson 236,821 23,31810.16 
FOOTNOTES:
Data: BusinessWeek.
Note: Domestic schools only. Schools with fewer than 50 survey responses excluded from analysis.
Total cost includes two years tuition and fees, student-reported living expenses, and forgone pre-MBA salary.
Salary premium based on student-reported pre- and post-MBA salaries only; does not include signing or performance bonuses, annual pay increases, stock options, or other compensation.