What an MBA really costs, and when it pays you back

Most cost pages stop at tuition. Yet for a two-year program the salary you do not earn is often as large as the fees: at Wharton, $157,500 of the $402,342 total for a person earning $90,000. The higher your salary today, the more the MBA costs you, and the longer it takes to repay, because the gain is the difference between what you will earn after and what you would have earned anyway. That is why the same school can pay back in four years for one applicant and never for another.

The calculator counts the salary given up as your current salary times the length of the program, minus what a two-year student earns during the summer internship. It then grows both paths, with and without the MBA, at rates shown under the result, which you can read on the method page.

One-year programs in Europe and Asia cut the salary given up roughly in half. INSEAD lasts 10 months, Wharton 21. The trade-off shows in the reports: two-year American schools publish higher median salaries, and their summer internship is the main door into investment banking and many consulting offices. A one-year program suits someone who already knows the industry they want; a two-year program gives a second chance to switch. The one-year ranking compares the short programs among themselves, on the same reference person.

Schools that follow the MBA CSEA standards publish a median base salary of graduates who accepted a full-time job, without the signing bonus. Others publish an average, which a few very high offers pull up, and some an average of total pay including bonuses. The site never converts one into another: each figure carries its label, and our ranking treats them as published. London Business School, for example, gives an average base salary of £91,928, not a median. A guide explains how to read an employment report, including the response rate and who is left out.

A school's average salary says little about your own path. What matters is how much of the class goes where you want to go, and what that segment pays. On our numbers, the best fit for consulting is UVA Darden, Kellogg and Dartmouth Tuck, each placing a large share of the class at $190,000 or so; for finance, Stanford GSB, Harvard and Wharton. The pages best MBA for consulting, for investment banking, for private equity and for tech give the full ranking, with the share, the number of graduates it means and the payback of each school.

The rubrics on consulting, finance and tech explain what the jobs are, how pay is set and how recruiting works, with their own calculators.

Where you want to live after the MBA narrows the list more than any ranking. American schools place more than nine graduates in ten in the United States; INSEAD sends 44% of its class to European jobs and 23% to Asia; LBS places 43% in the United Kingdom. Few schools publish a salary by region, so our regional rankings rest on the share of the class placed there: see working in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East.

Raise the salary in the calculator and watch the payback stretch. At some point the salary after the MBA no longer beats the salary you would have kept, raises included, and the result reads "over 30 years". This happens most with high earners going to schools whose graduates earn about what they earn already, and with applicants from countries where pay is lower than at the school's main market. A scholarship, a sponsored seat or an executive format, where you keep your salary, changes the picture: the executive MBA page computes that case.

The Financial Times, QS, US News and Bloomberg each rank schools on their own surveys and weights, and their tables belong to them. A school page here may quote one rank as a fact, with its link. Every ordering on this site is ours: computed from each school's own employment report and fees, with the formula of the method page, and recomputed on your salary. The page on MBA rankings explains what each publisher measures, so that you can read their rank next to ours.