How Much Does It Cost To Do An MBA In 2018?

As students prepare for b-school GD-PIs, we look at approximately 50 Management schools across India to assess the fees that they charge and rank them accordingly.
This comes after we released the list of India's Most Desirable B-Schools , where we ranked Management Schools across India on the basis of how desirable our users feel these b-schools are.

For this analysis, we first asked aspirants on InsideIIM what they think is an acceptable cost for an MBA.
You can find out more about this in our report What Is The Reasonable All-Inclusive Cost Of Doing An MBA?
We then came up with the list of what it actually costs to do an MBA from a b-school in India.
In this report, you will find that:

Compared to last year, b-schools have maintained the trend of an average fee of almost 14 Lakh Rupees for 2-year MBA programmes.
The top 3 old IIMs have hiked their fees as compared to last year, while IIM Lucknow remains the cheapest old IIM to do an MBA from.

The b-schools are listed in descending order of the fee that they charge. None of the figures here include costs of Foreign Exchange or Excursions. The range for the cost of accommodation has been mentioned along with the respective fees of the b-school.

The table below is inclusive of the fees as well as the batch size of the respective colleges.

Rank	B-School	Programme	Fees (Hostel Fees and Accomodation Costs included wherever applicable)	Batch Size
1	ISB Hyderabad	PGP 2018-19	33,34,073	905
2	IIM Ahmedabad	PGP	21,00,000	441
3	SIBM Pune	MBA	20,21,000	NA
4	IIM Calcutta	PGP	20,10,000	460
5	XLRI Jamshedpur	PGDM (BM & HRM)	20,00,000	364
6	MDI Gurgaon	PGPM/PGP-HRM	19,80,720	NA
7	IIM Bangalore	PGP	19,70,000	405
8	MISB Bocconi	PGP Business 2018-20	18,25,000.00+tax	84
9	IMT Ghaziabad	PGDM	17,50,000	543
10	IIM Kozhikode	PGP	17,50,000	374
11	NMIMS Mumbai	MBA/MBA HR	17,50,000	697
12	SIBM Bangalore	Full Time MBA	17,37,000	NA
13	SCMHRD	MBA	17,10,000	227
14	BIMTECH, Greater Noida	PGDM	17,00,000
15	XIM Bhubaneshwar	MBA-BM, MBA-HRM	16,70,000	NA
16	Great Lakes Chennai	PGDM	16,45,000	NA
17	IIFT Delhi and Kolkata	MBA (IB) 17-19	16,25,000	167
18	SPJIMR	PGPM/PGDM	16,25,000	242
19	IMI Delhi	PGDM	15,41,000	NA
20	Goa Institute of Management	PGDM	15,21,700+Hostel Fees ranging from 1,30,080 to 3,36,840	NA
21	NMIMS Hyderabad/Bangalore/Navi Mumbai	PGDM	14,50,000	NA
22	IIM Lucknow	PGP	14,16,000	462
23	Welingkar Mumbai	PGDM	14,09,000	NA
24	TAPMI Manipal	PGDM	14,03,500	NA
25	IIM Indore	PGP	14,00,000(Domestic)/21,00,000(NRI)	545
26	Welingkar Bangalore	PGDM	13,86,000	NA
27	IIM Ranchi	PGP	13,60,000	247
28	IIM Trichy	PGP	13,60,000	179
29	BIM Trichy	MBA 2018-20	13,50,000+80,000 Mess Expenses	NA
30	MICA Ahmedabad	PGDM-C	13,50,000	180
31	IIM, Kashipur	PGP	13,15,200	NA
32	IIM Udaipur	PGP	12,99,100	233
33	IIM Shillong	PGP	12,50,000	178
34	IBS Hyderabad	MBA Program (2017 – 2019)	12,50,000	NA
35	IIM Raipur	PGP 2017-19	12,31,200	NA
36	IIM Rohtak	PGPM 2017-19	12,16,000	262
37	Institute of Management, Nirma University	MBA full-time	12,12,000	NA
38	IRMA Anand	PGDRM	12,08,400	NA
39	IFMR Chennai	MBA	12,00,000	NA
40	IIM Nagpur	PGPM 2017-19	11,00,000	NA
41	MYRA School of Business	PGDM	10,00,000+1-2,00,000 Hostel Fees	NA
42	IIT Delhi	MBA/MBA (Telecom)	8,00,000	NA
43	VGSoM	MBA	7,31,830	NA
44	NITIE Mumbai	PGP	6,26,500	NA
45	JBIMS	MMS	6,00,000	139
46	TISS Mumbai	HRM & LR	2,38,000 (Hostellers)/ 1,14,600 (Non-Hostellers)	67
47	SJMSOM, IIT Bombay	MMS	2,29,600	113
48	SIMSREE Mumbai	MMS & PGDBM	1,38,000	NA
49	FMS Delhi	MBA	60,480	217

ISB Hyderabad maintains its position as the most expensive b-school in India. This was expected, considering it is globally the highest ranked Indian b-school. It is also a 1-year programme, so although it is expensive, it allows students to complete the course faster than other programmes, which subsequently allows students to start earning sooner.

If you compare these figures with those in our report How Much Does It Cost To Do A MBA In India In 2017 , you will discover that the top 3 IIMs have hiked their fees, with IIM Ahmedabad jumping 5 places and actually going above the likes of MISB Bocconi and XLRI Jamshedpur to become the 2nd most expensive b-School in India. Other top colleges such as MDI, IMT and SIBM Pune have also hiked their fees, with SIBM Pune jumping from the 8th most expensive to the 3rd most expensive b-school. XLRI has seen no change in their fees.

Coming to other IIMs, IIM Lucknow maintains its fee structure as in 2017, and remains the cheapest of the old IIM, while IIM Indore sees a slight hike.

IIM Kozikhode has hiked its fees as compared to 2017. Symbiosis b-schools are gradually becoming more expensive, with SIBM Pune, SIBM Bangalore, and SCMHRD featuring in the top 15 of the list.

The other end of the list features FMS Delhi, one the most sought after Management Institutes; with such a high ranking, relatively small batch size, great return on investment, and fees less than 3% of the fees of other top Institutes, there are no points for guessing why.
TISS and JBIMS also feature in the less expensive spectrum of the list.

While pursuing an MBA becomes more expensive almost every year, top b-schools such as FMS, JBIMS and even IIM Lucknow come as a relief to those who are ambitious but quiver at the thought of being in debt of education loans for 5-6 years of their lives.

So as an aspirant reading this analysis, what amount do you think you would want to pay for a 2-year MBA programme in India? Does an IIM tag compensate for these costs? Or would you consider spending a higher amount than what you would pay at ISB and study abroad?
Let us know what you think in the comments.

(Please point out any discrepancies in the comments section.)

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