Cost of Living During MBA

[MBAMensch]

Hi all,

Ive been accepted to the Hong Kong University MBA program and I wanted to ask current and past MBAers about something that I haven't seen mentioned very often - the cost of living while undertaking study.

Everyone has a clear idea of tutition costs but I haven't seen much around cost of living and particularly how much those costs blow out above expectations. I've read quite a bit about students having heavy social lives and going on Business Case Competition Trips or overseas study tours - while these are all exciting and have an important role to play in the MBA experience, they also sound expensive!

I'm interested to hear from those Seasoned Sams out there about this and things like how to save money while studying in a new city, the cost of study trips, and unexpected financial surprises.

Thanks.

[Michael@VeritasPrep]

I think the biggest way to figure out cost of living is to just use the city's cost of living as a starting point then add for various recruiting trips. Obviously Hong Kong is not a cheap city so that is going to be pretty expensive. Depending on what industry you are recruiting for, you could figure at least two or three networking trips per semester.