Most part-time MBA students finish the degree in about 2 to 4 years

Most MBA programs require between 2 and 5 years of professional experience

There’s no blanket rule for MBA programs about how much work experience an applicant should have. However, an admissions officer at an Ivy League business school said that while they’ve seen great candidates with only a year of experience, they also saw applicants who would clearly benefit from more.

An MBA return on investment calculator

On average, the total investment for an MBA degree is more than $200K, which includes tuition, living expenses, lost income, and potential interest on student loans. This calculator can help you figure out your own future MBA degree’s estimated ROI based on your unique situation.

The MBA has been the most popular graduate degree in America since 2010

Referring to MBA programs as “corporate America’s breeding ground,” comedian Dan Toomey recently interviewed experts on MBAs like Adam Grant, as well as MBA students themselves, to get a better idea of why the degree is so popular. Warning: profane language and content.

Finance is among the most popular specializations for MBA students

MBA specializations allow students to concentrate on a specific field during their studies. Other popular concentrations include marketing, entrepreneurship, and consulting. Learn more about MBA specializations in this article.

Tech, finance, and consulting industries hire roughly 70% of students from top MBA programs

However, hiring in these sectors has slowed in recent years due to overhiring and other factors, making the job search more difficult for recent MBA grads. This Wall Street Journal podcast episode has more details.

Women were barred from MBA enrollment for half a century

In 1908, Harvard launched the first modern MBA—and only admitted male candidates. The first full-year traditional female MBA students wouldn’t enroll at Harvard until 1963. Learn more about the history of the first women to receive their MBAs on Harvard’s website.

A guide to the MBA admissions process

From taking the GMAT or GRE to securing letters of recommendation from academic and professional references, the business school application can be a lengthy one. This article from the Princeton Review highlights the key things you need to do to apply to most MBA programs in the US.

Harvard Business School adapted its law school's ‘case method’ in MBA classes

Many MBA programs include classes structured around the “case method” rather than traditional lectures. In classes using the case method, students solve real-world business problems without being given the answers ahead of time, rather than listening to a lecture and taking notes.

Early MBA curricula were influenced by a movement in ‘scientific management’

The Scientific Management movement was pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early 1900s and posited managers should take a scientific approach to work, studying each task and system in the workplace from an objective lens. It’s still considered the backbone of modern management practices.

Inside the first year as a CEO

The CEO role is a complicated one, especially for those who haven't held it before. A recent study found that among CEOs who left their jobs in the first quarter of 2024, 15% held the job for less than 24 months. That's up almost 10% from 2019. This article highlights the challenges CEOs face in their first year on the job, and describes how they can overcome them. Read more here.

Around two in five students in any given academic year take out some form of student loans

Among the nearly two in five students who take out loans, 90% of those students rely on federal loan programs. These federal loans come in three flavors—subsidized, unsubsidized, and options for parents and graduate students. Each option has its own financial considerations; see an overview of each, along with what to consider when borrowing funds to cover higher education costs.

Explore the schedule of a three-month YC batch

During the three months that founders accepted into Y Combinator spend on YC’s California campus, they receive mentorship from YC partners, networking opportunities, and, overall, a ton of time to build and scale their companies.

Full-time employees can cost up to 1.4 times as much as an independent worker

While gig work jobs often have a low barrier to entry and flexible work hours, there are a few downsides to the sector, too. For instance, gig work platforms like Airbnb likely won’t pay for an Airbnb host’s health insurance or paid time off.

Retirement expectations versus reality

There's a big gap between what many Americans expect to happen during retirement and what actually happens—at least according to one financial planner. In this article, the financial planner in question explores how retirement expectations can differ from reality, exploring financial considerations such as how long people expect to work part-time during retirement, and more. Read the article here.

The 'Two and Twenty' structure allows hedge funds and private equity firms to earn significant returns

With this structure, firms charge limited partners or "LPs" a 2% management fee for overseeing the fund (assets under management or AUM) and take 20% of the fund's overall profits (carried interest). Many private credit funds also operate under this structure.

In 2024, the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday saw 197 million shoppers

Some argue Black Friday has gone from one day of the year, to two days of the year, including Cyber Monday sales, to, more recently, an entire week. In recent years, companies have offered steep discounts for a week at a time rather than just one or two days.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many private schools offered in-person classes

By early 2021, approximately 76% of private schools offered some form of in-person learning compared with 38% of public schools.

Chess can be played at lightning-fast or classical speeds

Time controls shape how the game is played—from bullet matches under three minutes, to blitz games under 10, to classical contests lasting over an hour. Each format demands different skills, from rapid intuition to deep calculation.

Doctors report wanting more time to plan, provide care for patients

Many physicians experience aspects of burnout, and concierge medicine provides a slower, more relational approach to medicine, including consistent follow-up care for a smaller pool of patients. A concierge medicine clinician may talk with each patient frequently, perhaps every few weeks, instead of just once a year.

37 states today limit how long governors can serve

Most states cap governors to two consecutive four-year terms, though rules vary—Virginia is unique in allowing only one term at a time. These limits reflect a long tradition of restricting executive power at the state level.

Tardigrades typically live between 3 and 30 months

While avoiding predators, including other tardigrades, nematodes, snails, mites and some fungi, these organisms feed on decaying plant matter and cellular fluid, which they access by puncturing cell walls with their stylets—spear-like structures within their mouths.

Postmenopause is a stage lasting roughly a third of a woman's life

Postmenopause is the final stage of menopause, occurring once a woman hasn't had any bleeding for a full year. She is then considered postmenopausal for the rest of her life. While some of the intense symptoms she might experience during perimenopausal will decline, her risk for certain conditions and diseases will increase.

Bipolar disorder, which is characterized by extreme mood swings, affects nearly 3% of the US population

There are two types of this disorder. Bipolar 1 features a significant manic episode—abnormally elevated mood and frantic energy—followed by repeated depression, while Bipolar 2 vacillates between depressive episodes and hypomania, a milder form of mania, but not a full mania. Listen to this podcast as experts explain the condition.

An ad agency is a firm that a company contracts to assist with marketing efforts

While some corporations have marketers and advertisers as full-time employees, others contract advertising agencies to get the work done. Ad agencies typically have a variety of departments depending on their specialty, but they often include account executives to help manage client relationships and a creative department to produce the ads.

Long-term memory formation may not need short-term memory

New research shows that long-term memories can still develop even when short-term memory formation is blocked, suggesting the brain uses separate pathways for short- and long-term memory. This discovery could help scientists open new avenues for treating memory loss in diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Doctors differentiate between a phobia and fear by asking patients whether their fear interferes with their day-to-day activities.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.