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accioadmit
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The ROI math most Indian applicants get wrong on European MBAs 18 Aug 2026, 07:13
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Seeing a lot of "INSEAD vs LBS vs a US M7 for ROI" threads lately, and most of the math in them is the same math. Tuition, average post-MBA salary, divide, done.

That calculation misses four things that decide whether a European MBA actually pays back for an Indian applicant.
  1. Currency mismatch on the debt. You borrow in INR or in USD. You earn in EUR or GBP. Your payback period moves with the exchange rate for the entire life of the loan, and nobody models that.
  2. Work rights window vs actual job search timeline. The UK Graduate Route and the Spanish and French post-study permits all have fixed clocks. What matters is how much of that clock is left after you graduate, and how long a search actually takes in that market for a non-EU candidate without the local language. Those two numbers rarely line up the way people assume.
  3. Gross vs net. Headline salary comparisons between London, Paris, Madrid and a US city are close to meaningless before tax and social contributions. The gap between two offers can invert once you look at take-home.
  4. Program length is not just a cost saving. A 10 month program means less tuition and less lost salary, but it also means one recruiting cycle instead of two, and a compressed window to switch function and geography at the same time. That trade is real and it is underpriced in most threads here.
I did my MBA at IE and I have been working in Madrid since. Happy to answer questions on any of the above in this thread, particularly around the Spanish and French markets, which get discussed the least here.

We are running a session on this on Thursday if anyone wants the full breakdown with numbers: accioadmit[.]com/aug-20-webinar