As opposed to many other graduate degrees, MBA candidates need to have a few years of business experience in addition to their bachelor's degree, which does not necessarily need to be in any particular discipline. This would ideally be management experience, but any business experience is advantageous, whether it's in sales, marketing, accounting or finance. This means that most MBA candidates are 25 years old or older.
MBA programs tend to have lectures and discussion groups, just like an undergraduate degree. However, it is more collaborative than undergraduate degrees in that discussion between students is encouraged. This is extremely valuable because almost every student has a business background, so a lot of the knowledge you gain from an MBA is simply from discussing ideas with people who are also from the business world. To encourage this, group projects are common. MBA students can expect to do a lot of group work to foster and develop their management skills and general people skills.
Since there are so many MBA programs available, from full time to part time to online, the amount of time you can expect to spend as an MBA student is equally variable. Some part-time students can take up to seven years to obtain an MBA, but most students are in MBA programs for 18 months to two years.
MBA programs vary depending on your specialty, but you can expect to deal with five key business subjects: marketing, quantitative analysis, accounting, organizational behavior and economics. This means you should be prepared to write qualitative essays on the "softer" subjects like economics and marketing but also be prepared to crunch numbers and put forth hard data for the "harder" subjects like quant analysis and accounting. MBA graduates are well-rounded, so you need to be prepared to study a variety of different subjects.