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What You Need To Know About An Online EMBA

Many professionals don’t want to give up working for two years – or give up every weekend for class. For them, the online executive MBA was created.

Jordan Friedman, an editor at US News, recently covered some facts about online EMBAs that prospective applicants should know before applying.

EMBAs are Best for Working Professionals

An EMBA can be especially useful for seasoned professionals on the fast track at their firms.

“Partially or fully online EMBAs typically cater to working adults who don’t want to quit their full-time jobs to further their education,” Freidman writes. “This may be especially true for prospective EMBA students who already hold higher-level roles at their company.”

Dave Bellomy is a 2015 graduate of the blended EMBA program at the University of Arkansas. In his program, EMBAs visit campus once a month and continuously complete coursework online. In an interview with US News, Bellomy says the EMBA was an option that fit his career.

“With an established career, and I had three kids at the time and am married, the full-time program wasn’t an option for me, so I decided to go this route,” Bellomy tells US News. “It allowed me to work and to continue to advance in my career at the same time as getting my degree.”

Acceptance Rates are Higher for EMBAs

At some of the toughest MBA programs, such as Wharton, Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, and Columbia Business School, the acceptance rates for EMBAs is much higher than normal full-time MBAs.

According to Poets & Quants, Wharton accepts more than twice as many EMBA applicants as it does candidates for its full-time MBA program—and Wharton is the toughest EMBA program to get into.

However, that’s not to say that it’s necessarily easy to get into an EMBA program. Some schools have different requirements. At University of Virginia Darden School of Business, for example, applicants are required to submit GMAT, GRE, or Executive Assessment test scores. Darden also prefers applicants who have seven years of professional experience. At Howard University School of Business, applicants aren’t required to submit test scores, but they are required to have eight to 10 years of professional experience, according to US News.

EMBA Students Have Diverse Backgrounds

Experts say that the EMBA student demographic allows for a unique classroom learning environment. Since a majority of EMBAs are working professionals, students tend to come from a wide array of industry backgrounds.

“That diversity of experience, both in years and industry and geography, leads to a different component of the classroom learning,” Mike Waldie, director of the graduate school at the University of Arkansas’s Walton College of Business, tells US News.

Sources: US News, Poets & Quants