It is not free because you will be investing your time. In fact, the time you will be investing into graduate school is probably worth a lot more than the monet

It is not free because you will be investing your time. In fact, the time you will be investing into graduate school is probably worth a lot more than the monetary cost of that education. There is always an opportunity cost. You could spend the two years continue working on your startup, and possibly get a much larger payout than a graduate education will yield over your lifetime. A question you should ask yourself is: What do you want to do with your life, and how will graduate school help you with that? It seems like your goal is to do a startup. If that's the case then you probably won't benefit much from a graduate education, be it a business or technical degree. The main resource you get out of graduate school that is directly applicable to startups are connections. Potential co-founders, advisors and early employees. The "quality" of these connections is directly related to which school you will attend. In other words, attending a top-tier school may be well worth it due the connections you will make there, even if the actual educational content will turn out to be useless (which is most likely the case for startups). The other way to look at it is that graduate school can give you a nice break from professional life. It certainly can be a fun time. PS: I was in a similar position. I applied to graduate school without knowing whether or not I actually wanted to go. I ended up going because it was "free" (I was paid to do research) and dropped out after a year because I felt like I was not getting enough value in return for all the time I was spending.