MBA ROI Calculator
Work out what a full-time MBA actually costs you, and how long it takes to earn back — counting the loan interest and the salary you gave up, not just the fee on the brochure.
Run your own numbers
Start from a school or enter your own figures. The loan section matters more than people expect: interest and repayment length move the total cost by lakhs.
Where the money goes
Year by year, against not doing the MBA
How this is calculated, and why the number is bigger than you've seen elsewhere
The total above counts four costs that shorter ROI figures usually leave out: the salary given up while studying, interest on the loan, the tax that stands between CTC and the money you can actually spend, and the raise you would have received by staying in your job anyway. The page below this tool explains why each one belongs in the sum.
Moratorium interest. Repayment is deferred until the course ends plus twelve months, or six months after you start work, whichever comes first. For most graduates who are placed on campus, the six-month clause is the one that applies. Interest still accrues through that window, and unless you service it, it is added to your principal. The toggle above shows what that costs: on a ₹25 lakh loan at 7.5%, servicing the interest while you study saves around ₹1.35 lakh over a seven-year repayment, and roughly ₹3.1 lakh if the loan is stretched over fifteen years.
Two things this model simplifies. It assumes the full loan is drawn on day one, where banks in practice disburse semester by semester, so real moratorium interest will be lower than shown. And it assumes you find work promptly after the course.
On the default rate. Students at the IIMs, XLRI and MDI now borrow through PM-Vidyalaxmi rather than the older premier-institute schemes, which currently prices the top tier at 6.85% to 7.25% with no collateral and no guarantor. ISB and FMS Delhi sit on SBI's Scholar Loan list at 6.90% to 7.65%. Without one of those concessions a general education loan runs 9.35% to 9.90%. The 7.5% default sits a little above today's best published rate deliberately: these are floating rates tied to the repo, the repo is at the bottom of its cycle, and a seven-year repayment will not spend all seven years there.
The tax deduction is not what it used to be. The education-loan interest deduction, Section 80E under the old Act and Section 129 under the Income Tax Act 2025 that takes effect in April 2026, does not exist under the new tax regime. The new regime has been the default since April 2023, so unless you actively opt out of it, this deduction is worth nothing to you. Where it does apply it covers interest only, with no ceiling, for eight years from the year you first pay interest. Borrowing from an NBFC rather than a bank, check that the lender is a notified financial institution, or it does not apply at all.
On the salary figures. Where a school publishes a median, this tool uses the median rather than the average — Indian placement distributions are skewed by a handful of very large offers. Only IIM Ahmedabad's report is independently audited; every other figure here is self-reported by the institute. Fee figures are for the incoming batch where published, while placement figures describe the batch that just graduated, so the two are about two years apart.
What this does not model. Scholarships, family contribution, part-payment of the loan, promotions on either path, a career switch that changes trajectory rather than just level, or the value of the network. It also assumes you get and keep a job at the salary you entered.
One more simplification worth naming, since this page spends its time criticising figures that leave things out: the rupees are not discounted. A rupee earned in year eight is added to a rupee spent in year one as though they were the same thing. They are not — inflation means the later one is worth less — so a strictly financial treatment would push the payback out somewhat further than shown here.
Interest rates checked against SBI, Bank of Baroda, PNB and Canara Bank published rate cards, September 2026. Fees and placement figures from each institute's own fee structure and placement report. Salary growth assumption of 9% from Aon and Deloitte India projections for 2026. Tax slabs per the Income Tax Department for the current regime. This is an estimate for planning, not financial advice.
Why most MBA ROI numbers are wrong
Search for the return on an IIM degree and you will find payback periods of nine or ten months quoted confidently. Those figures come from dividing the fee by the salary jump. That arithmetic leaves out four costs, every one of them real:
- The salary you gave up. Two years out of the workforce on a ₹9 lakh package is about ₹14 lakh of take-home pay that never arrives, counting the raise you would have had in the second year. At most schools this is a larger cost than the fee itself.
- Interest on the loan. Even on the concessional rates these schools qualify for, a ₹25 lakh loan repaid over seven years carries something like ₹13 lakh of interest. Without a premier-institute concession, on a general education loan near 9.5 per cent, it is closer to ₹17.5 lakh.
- Interest that accrues while you study. Repayment is deferred until the course ends plus twelve months, or six months after you start work, whichever comes first. Unless you service the interest through that window it is added to your principal, so the loan you start repaying is larger than the one you took.
- The raise you would have received anyway. Staying put, your salary would still have grown — Aon and Deloitte both project around 9 per cent a year across Indian industry for 2026. An MBA earns you the gap between the two paths, not the entire new salary.
Put those back in and the payback period stretches to years rather than months. How many depends almost entirely on the size of the salary jump: on the calculator’s default inputs it comes to five years, a school with a strong median against the same fee brings it down to three, and FMS Delhi — on a fee of ₹2.43 lakh — to two. Give up a larger salary to study, or borrow without a premier-institute concession, and it runs longer. What does not happen, on any honest set of inputs, is a payback inside the first year.
The fee is not the number that decides this
FMS Delhi charges about ₹2.4 lakh for two years and places its graduates at a median of roughly ₹29.6 lakh. IIM Indore charges about ₹25 lakh and reported a 2026 median of ₹25 lakh. On pure return, those two are not close — and neither ranking tables nor brand reputation will tell you that.
What moves the answer most, in order: the size of the salary jump, the fee, and then the loan structure. A candidate already earning ₹20 lakh has a much longer payback than a fresher, because the salary foregone is larger and the jump is smaller. The calculator above is built to show exactly that trade-off for your own numbers rather than an average candidate’s.
Two things worth knowing before you borrow
Service the interest during the course if you can. On a ₹25 lakh loan at 7.5 per cent, paying the interest as it accrues rather than letting it capitalise saves around ₹1.35 lakh over a seven-year repayment, and roughly ₹3.1 lakh if the loan runs fifteen years. Family support during the study years is worth considerably more than the same help after graduation.
Find out which scheme you qualify for before you compare rates. Students at the IIMs, XLRI Jamshedpur and MDI Gurgaon now borrow through PM-Vidyalaxmi, which prices its top tier around 6.85 to 7.25 per cent and asks for no collateral and no guarantor. ISB Hyderabad and FMS Delhi appear on SBI’s Scholar Loan list instead, at 6.90 to 7.65 per cent. Miss both and you are on a general education loan at 9.35 to 9.90 per cent — on ₹25 lakh over seven years that difference is roughly ₹4.2 lakh of interest. These are floating rates tied to the repo rate, which is currently at the low end of its cycle, so budget for them to rise over a long repayment.
Check which tax regime you will be in. The education-loan interest deduction, Section 80E under the old Act and Section 129 under the Income Tax Act 2025 that takes effect in April 2026, does not exist under the new tax regime. The new regime has been the default since April 2023, so it applies unless you have actively opted out. If you were counting on that deduction to soften the interest, confirm it reaches you before building it into the plan. Borrowing from an NBFC rather than a bank, also check that the lender is a notified financial institution.
Where the numbers come from
Fees are taken from each institute’s own published fee structure for the incoming batch where available, and placement figures from each institute’s own placement report. Where a school publishes a median, the median is used rather than the average — Indian placement distributions are pulled upward by a small number of very large offers. Only IIM Ahmedabad’s placement report is independently audited; the rest are self-reported.
For the programme detail behind these numbers — what each school actually teaches, how the terms are structured and how shortlists are built — see the individual guides: