How the calculators are built, where the numbers come from, and who signs off on them.
Every figure on this site traces back to a formula you can see or a public dataset you can check yourself. Nothing is guessed, and nothing you type into a calculator is stored on our end.
Chris Terry oversees OnlineMBACompare: the calculator logic, the contributing writers, and the accuracy of the tuition and salary figures published here.
The MBA ROI, cost, loan payment, and salary increase tools each use a documented formula, simple payback, standard loan amortization, or straightforward compounding, that we test against hand-calculated examples before publishing. When we update a calculator's assumptions, we note the change in the tool itself rather than quietly swapping numbers.
Tuition ranges and program details are drawn from schools' own published cost pages, checked periodically for drift. Salary figures cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook and the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard, both public and both linked directly from the articles that use them. National medians will not match every reader's city or industry, which is exactly why every calculator lets you substitute your own numbers instead of accepting a default.
If a school changes its tuition or a data source updates its figures, tell us and we will fix the page. Some pages on this site carry affiliate links to lenders or financial products; that relationship is disclosed where it applies and never changes what a calculator computes.
