mappleby wrote:
Anybody know if the Financing Your MBA section is meant to cover the full Student Budget or just the tuition to attend Columbia?
Your whole student budget. Nobody really knows how they use this information. I more or less said "lever up!" I think possibly its to help people ask critical financing questions of themselves before applying versus after. Someone probably showed the adcoms some study that said it increases yield by reducing the number of applicants who don't understand the financing costs until after being admitted (and then subsequently drop), causing them to add this section.
Obviously they don't expect you to get a commitment letter from your local bank before applying, so the exercise really just makes sure you have some sort of plan in place.
The application clearly mentions "tuition". Hence, you should limit this to the tuition expenditure, but cover it in such a way that the cost gets covered including inflation for next year.