Is an MBA worth it? Run your numbers.

The calculator compares two monthly income paths over 30 years (360 months) starting from enrollment: staying on your current path, and going to business school. Every number is pre-tax - version 1 doesn't model taxes, so both paths are compared on the same symmetric basis.

Your current path grows your current salary by your expected raise rate every 12 months.

The MBA path has two phases. During the program, a full-time student's income is their internship income (if any), minus the self-funded share of the program cost (cost after scholarships, minus what's borrowed) spread evenly across the program's length. Part-time, online, and executive students are assumed to keep earning at their current-path rate during the program, since those formats are designed to be completed alongside a job - only the self-funded cost is subtracted. After the program, income is the entered post-MBA salary (growing at the post-MBA raise rate), minus a standard amortized loan payment on the borrowed amount - and that payment stops once the loan term is fully repaid, however long that takes.

Each month, the calculator subtracts the current-path income from the MBA-path income and adds the result to a running total - discounted back to today's dollars at the discount rate, so a dollar of gain ten years out counts for less than a dollar of gain next year. Breakeven is the first month that running total reaches zero or higher. The sensitivity strip reruns the same calculation with your post-MBA salary scaled to 80% and 120% of what you entered.

Worked example. Someone earning $75,000 (3% annual raises) borrows half of a $70,000 net program cost at 8% over 10 years for a 21-month full-time program with no internship income, then earns $115,000 post-MBA (5% annual raises). With no income to offset the self-funded half of tuition (spread evenly across the program), they run a shortfall of about $1,670/month during the program, then jump to about $9,580/month after graduation, minus a roughly $425/month loan payment for a net $9,160/month - versus a current path that would have grown from $6,250/month to about $6,440/month over the same 21 months. Discounted at this model's default 5% rate, that gap closes the initial deficit in about 7 years.