Has anyone seen or put together their own budget for a full-time MBA program? The budgets I’ve seen posted by the schools are very low IMO. They don’t account for trips, “social networking” (i.e. going out >3x/week), and many other necessities (gym, cable, blackberry, etc). Based on my initial calculations, bschool will run me about about $100K/year +/- $5K. Does anyone have an itemized budget that they could post to compare? Thanks. FYI: This budget is assuming full tuition in a big city (think average of top 5 u.s. news schools).
Plus opportunity cost
There are a few spreadsheets floating around… try GMAT Club. Should be easy to construct in 5 minutes with CFA abilities anyways!
the “budgets” posted on the school websites are for financial aid calc’n purposes… and no- cable and “networking” trips to the bar are not considered required expenses 
i didnt budget. and now i am in debt for the rest of my life.
Mistake* see next post.
Whoops nvm - checked out my ACTUAL budget - 90K. So 100K isn’t that aggressive.
akanska - I have added cable and cell phone bills. Good point on the social networking - I assume I will spend more in school than I do working because I will likely go out more. For “social networking”, I budgeted $50/night x 3 nights/week x 36 weeks = $5,400. For international trips, I have allowed for three per year. One prior to school, one winter break, one spring break. At $3,000 a pop that gets me to $9,000. Additionally, I figure I will be flying a minimum of one week per month for interviews/informationals in other cities. This will likely run another $3,600. Adding these figures to an $80K/year “basic budget” gets me to $100K/year pretty quick. Quite depressing to say the least.
$3000 per trip seems hefty.