Put total course fees on one side and the package a college's graduates report on the other, and see how long the degree takes to pay for itself. The arithmetic most shortlists skip.
What goes in
Total cost, not per year
Payback in months
Enter the course cost and the package you expect
Avg starting salary: ₹8.50 L | Annual salary growth: 12%
₹4.00 L total fees
Hostel + food + transport (per year). Total: ₹2.40 L
One-time costs — books, laptop, coaching, admission & exam fees, travel. Added to your total investment.
What you forgo by studying instead of working
Fill in your details and click Calculate ROI to see your 10-year earnings projection and break-even analysis.
No forecasting model sits behind this — it is your own inputs, compounded. Change an input and the answer moves.
Total investment
Fees + living + one-off costs
Across the full course duration, not one year.
Opportunity cost
Salary forgone × years
Only if you are leaving a job to study. Optional.
Expected return
Starting package, compounded
Stream-wide averages, not one college's placement record.
Break-even
Year cumulative earnings clear the cost
The shorter it is, the less financial risk you carry.
Return on investment reframes the fee question: not 'is this expensive?' but 'how long does this degree take to pay for itself?' The calculator puts total cost against expected earnings to answer that.
Add every year's tuition plus hostel, exam and development charges. A four-year course at a modest annual fee can still be a large total.
Use the median for your branch if you can find it, not the advertised average and certainly not the highest package. The average is inflated by a few outlier offers.
The output is how long the salary difference takes to recover the cost. A shorter payback means less financial risk if things do not go to plan.
Fees across every year of the course, not the first-year figure that prospectuses lead with.
How long the expected salary takes to cover what the degree cost, expressed in months so two colleges are directly comparable.
A high fee with a strong placement record can pay back faster than a cheap degree that leads nowhere. The calculation is what separates them.
Change the expected package and watch the payback move. If a college only works at the best-case salary, that is worth knowing early.
A payback figure is the number a bank, and a parent, will actually engage with.
The ordering by ROI is often very different from the ordering by reputation — which is the point of doing it.
ROI is one lens, not the whole decision
It cannot price a department you would actually enjoy, or a campus you could reach every day. Use it to rule out the indefensible, not to pick the winner.
Course fees, living costs for the full duration, any one-time miscellaneous expenses you enter, and — if you fill it in — the salary you'd forgo by studying instead of working (opportunity cost).
It's the point where your cumulative post-graduation earnings finally exceed everything you spent (and forwent) to get the degree. A shorter break-even means the degree pays for itself faster.
No — they're stream-wide averages (e.g. all B.Tech CS graduates), not a specific college's placement data. For a specific college's actual average package, check that college's page or use the Compare tool.
The tool is free and runs without an account. You only share contact details if you choose to request counselling, and nothing is required to see your results.
Compare total fees against expected salary, estimate your payback period, and project 10-year earnings for any Pune college — covering B.Tech, MBA, MBBS, BCA, BBA, LLB and more.
For engineering: COEP Pune offers the best ROI — government fees of ₹80K/yr against a ₹12 LPA average placement. PICT Pune offers strong ROI for CS/IT (₹1.4–1.9L fees, ₹7.5 LPA avg). For MBA: Indira Institute of Management (₹4.2–6.5L total fees, ₹7.2 LPA avg) and MIT-SOM (₹7–11L, ₹12 LPA avg) offer better ROI than SIBM if cost is the priority. For medical: AFMC Pune is unbeatable — near-zero fees, a prestigious armed forces medical career with a service obligation, and unmatched national recognition.
Talk the numbers through with a CollegePune counsellor before you sign anything.
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