Ming Min Hui, 25, a first-year student at Harvard Business School who previously worked at JPMorgan Chase, says travel is an investment in her career. In January, she went on the WesTrek, sponsored by the TechMedia Club. The excursion is billed as a way to give students an “insider’s perspective on the tech industry in the Bay Area,” but is not an official Harvard Business School trip, says Jinal Surti, 27, one of the organizers of this year’s event.

During the three days, Ms. Hui and close to 200 of her classmates visited 90 companies, including Google, Facebook, Tesla, Sephora and venture capital firms. Mr. Surti, a second-year student at Harvard Business School, says students typically spent $350 to $1,000 on the trip, including lodging. He said many students received job offers and interviews as a result.

Image Jeremy Shinewald, a consultant, says that a low to moderate travel budget for an M.B.A. student would be $5,000 for two years, but that $20,000 to $30,000 isn’t uncommon. Credit... Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Ms. Hui has been on eight not-for-credit trips during her first year. “An M.B.A. is very different from a law or medical degree; the M.B.A. is designed for networking reasons,” she says. Over spring break, she hiked the Inca Trail in Peru through a student-organized trip.

Taking a career-related trip has been worth the investment for Eric Caballero. In 2003, Mr. Caballero, then a second-year student at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., received internship offers from Intel and Cisco Systems after leading a career trek to Silicon Valley. “I got interviews at firms, and I certainly feel more comfortable reaching out to the people I went on the career trek with for favors than the average classmate,” says Mr. Caballero, 36, now vice president for programming at the nonprofit Venture for America, based in New York.

Excursions can mean spending $3,000 before the first day of class. At the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, many first-year students choose among about 35 trips as part of Kwest, or Kellogg Worldwide Experience and Service Trips — five- to eight-day excursions to places like Costa Rica and Zanzibar, in an effort to help first-year students get to know one another. These student-led trips cost $2,100 to $3,600 a person.

Descriptions of some Kwest trips are more reminiscent of a college spring break than a master’s program for emerging business leaders. A website for the Kwest Turkey trip boasts: “ 1/2 exploring and raging in Istanbul + 1/2 Bodrum beachside paradise = BEST WEEK OF YOUR LIFE! Boat cruises, bike tours, Turkish baths, wild night life, famous mosques and markets. Kwest Turkey has it all!”