Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Forget School Tuition, Applying for an MBA is Expensive!

Everyone always talks about the cost of tuition in bschool but what about applying?!?!? Before I began this whole process I made an estimated budget for the cost of applying to bschool. Well, its time to re-evaluate my budget. I  have yet to fill out one application but the grand total spent on this applying process is $2,139.85. While budget planning, I took into account school application fees, gmat fees, gmat prep, and  school visits cost but I realized I forgot a few things.  Below is the breakdown of what is in version 1 of my budget.  

  • Gmat- I budgeted for $250 but spent $500. I lost in the first round of GMAT vs Ms.HR but I've stepped up my training so I WILL be the winner of round 2. 
  • Manhattan Gmat: $1,290.
  • Application Fees- $1,000. I made the assumptions that I will apply to 5 school @ $200 for each application.  Some school waive the application fees if you attend certain events, I'm hoping I can do some of those events to lower the application costs.
  • School Visits/Diversity Weekend/Interviews- $1750. $350 for a plane ticket and hotel for each school, assuming I go to one of the events. 
The above brings my estimated budget to a total to : $4,540.

This is what I planned for but this weekend I realized that I forgot to budget in a few things.  The most important thing being a suit! The last time I wore a suit was 3.5 years ago. I can't attend bschool events without being properly dressed. At my current job the my dress code  is casual/business causal emphasis on the causal.  I'm going to need to start investing in business professional clothes. Anyway I'm planning on working on version 2 of my budget this weekend, below are a few more things I need to add to it.

Suit + a few business professional outfits
Extra gmat grep books  
Application books ( books on how to craft a winning application)

Anything else I didn't account for? Also any tips for bringing down the cost of applying? 

-Ms. HR

7 comments:

pro April 13, 2011 at 2:22 AM  

Nice blog! I like your writing way. I'm doing practice GMAT here: gmatonlinetest.com . I hope it's useful for GMAT test takers.

nt April 13, 2011 at 2:36 PM  

hi,
i'm just went through the entire application process and definitely empathize with you about the costs.

to save on application costs, you may want to consider applying through the consortium--you could apply up to 6 schools (i think) for a fraction of the cost: http://www.cgsm.org/

good luck!

Ms. HR April 13, 2011 at 5:31 PM  

@pro thanks! I'm glad you like it.
@ nt thanks for the advice! I have heard about them and i'm def going to try to apply to some of the schools. If only all schools were apart of the consortium

Bhushan Pratap Singh April 14, 2011 at 6:46 AM  

Thanks A lot, really nice post on MBA ...Keep posting....

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