How Long Does It Take to Get an MBA? What Ranked Programs Actually Publish

• Full-time MBA: 20 to 24 months. Wharton lists 20 months; Chicago Booth, UNC Kenan-Flagler and Georgetown 21; Duke Fuqua and UCLA Anderson 22; Yale, Berkeley Haas, Columbia and most others two years.
• One-year MBA: 12 months, offered by some schools alongside the two-year track, such as Cornell's Johnson Cornell Tech MBA and NYU Stern's focused MBAs.
• Executive MBA: about 21 to 24 months, taught evenings or weekends while you keep working.
• Part-time and online MBA: as short as 18 months and as long as six years, because you set the pace.

So the honest answer to how long does it take to get an MBA is: 20 to 24 months if you study full-time the traditional way, one year if you pick an accelerated program and qualify for it, and usually two to three years part-time or online, where Auburn reports a 31-month average and Boston University says three years is typical.

How long is an MBA program? The format you choose decides the calendar far more than the school does. Here is what ranked programs publish for each format:

Full-time. The two-year model is still the norm. Cornell Johnson, NYU Stern, Boston University Questrom, Vanderbilt Owen, University of Georgia, UC Irvine Merage, Boston College Carroll, University of Florida, Yale SOM, UC Berkeley Haas, Columbia Business School, UT Austin McCombs and WashU Olin all describe a two-year program. Six schools give an exact month count instead: Penn Wharton (20 months), UNC Kenan-Flagler (21 months), Georgetown McDonough (21 months), Chicago Booth (21 months), Duke Fuqua (22 months) and UCLA Anderson (22 months).

Part-time. Here the published figure is a window, not a fixed length. NYU Stern lists its part-time MBA at "2-6 years to complete." Boston University says its part-time MBA is "typically completed in three years and must be completed within six years." Georgetown lists 24 to 60 months for both its part-time and online formats.

Online. Online MBAs publish the widest ranges. UNC Kenan-Flagler lists 18 to 36 months, Illinois Gies 24 to 60 months, and Auburn reports a 31-month average completion with a six-year window. The average is the more useful number: it shows how long working students actually take, not just the limits.

For a ranked list of formats you can finish while working, see our online MBA programs ranking.

Here is a detail that single-school guides skip: a "two-year" MBA is two academic years, not 24 calendar months of class. Wharton spells it out. Its MBA runs 20 months, "including a 3.5 month summer internship," with year one running from early August to May and year two from early September to May.

Other schools that publish months land in the same place. Chicago Booth lists 21 months in the program, and Duke Fuqua and UCLA Anderson list 22. Columbia describes its full-time MBA as "four terms (2 academic years)," and Berkeley Haas requires four semesters in residence.

So when a school answers how long does it take to get an MBA with "two years," read it as two academic years. Two practical consequences follow. First, the summer between the two years is part of the design: it is the internship, and Chicago Booth goes further, listing a qualified work experience such as a summer internship as a requirement. Second, if you are budgeting time out of work, plan for roughly 21 to 22 months away from a paycheck, minus whatever the internship pays, rather than a flat two years.

If you want the shortest answer to how long does it take to get an MBA, it is the 1 year MBA. But a 1 year MBA is not simply a faster version of the two-year degree. The schools that offer both set them up differently, and the differences show up in credits, entry requirements and price.

• Fewer credits. The University of Florida's two-year MBA requires at least 48 credits; its one-year program for business majors requires at least 32. NYU Stern's two-year general MBA is 60 credits; its one-year focused MBAs are 52.
• A narrower entry door. UF's one-year business majors track is built for students who already studied business, so they skip the foundation courses.
• No summer between years. In a two-year program, the summer after the first year is when students typically do an internship. A one-year program has no such summer, which matters if you are switching careers and need that trial run.
• Lower tuition, not half the tuition. Cornell publishes an estimated total tuition of $139,030 for its one-year Johnson Cornell Tech MBA and $177,868 for its two-year Ithaca MBA. Cutting the program in half cuts tuition by about 22 percent.

The bigger saving from a one-year MBA is not tuition. It is the second year of salary you keep, which the next section puts a number on.

For a full-time student, how long does it take to get an MBA is really a question about how long you go without a paycheck. That cost usually exceeds tuition. Using national medians from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), a year out of work costs about:

• $101,860 for a management analyst, a role where BLS notes some employers prefer an MBA
• $102,740 for a financial analyst
• $105,770 for a general and operations manager
• $50,980 at the median for all occupations

Now combine that with tuition. At Cornell, the one-year MBA's published tuition plus one year of a management analyst's median pay comes to $240,890. The two-year MBA's tuition plus two years of that pay comes to $381,588. The gap, $140,698, is mostly the extra year of forgone salary, not the extra tuition.

Two caveats keep this honest. First, a paid summer internship in a two-year program offsets part of that second year, and internship pay varies too widely to average here. Second, these are medians: someone earning well above the median gives up more per month, which is exactly why experienced managers lean toward executive and part-time formats that let them keep working.

For the full tuition picture, see how much an MBA costs, and for the payback math, is an MBA worth it. What MBA graduates earn afterward is on our MBA salary page.

A natural shortcut is to compare how many credits each MBA requires. It does not work, because schools count in different units. From the programs' own catalogs:

• Penn Wharton: "19.0 CU" (credit units)
• Berkeley Haas: "51 valid units of coursework" over four semesters
• Columbia: "60 credits of graduate-level courses"
• UC Irvine Merage: "a minimum of 92 units"
• Illinois Gies online MBA: "a 72 credit hour program"
• WashU Olin: "a minimum of 67 credit units"
• Boston University Questrom: "a full-time program of 64 units"
• NYU Stern: 60 credits for the two-year general MBA
• University of Florida: "a minimum of 48 qualified credits"

Wharton's 19 and Irvine's 92 both describe roughly two years of full-time study. A course unit, a quarter unit and a semester credit measure different amounts of work, so a program with more credits is not necessarily longer or harder. When you compare MBA programs, compare months of study and the number of courses, and ask each school how its unit converts. For the question of how long does it take to get an MBA, months are the only unit that compares.

For experienced managers, how long does it take to get an MBA in an executive format? About as long as full-time. An executive MBA does not necessarily save time. At UNC Kenan-Flagler the weekend executive MBA runs 21 months and the evening executive MBA 24, the same range as its 21-month full-time MBA. What changes is who is in the room and when class meets.

UNC publishes average work experience for each format: 5 years for full-time students, 9 for evening executive, 12 for weekend executive and 10 for online. Georgetown sets a minimum of two years of work experience for its full-time MBA and one year for its part-time and online MBAs, with averages of 5.6, 5.1 and 5.8 years.

So the executive MBA vs MBA choice is mostly about career stage. If you have a decade of experience and a job you want to keep, the executive format fits that. If you are earlier in your career or changing fields, the full-time format gives you the internship and recruiting access.

Yes, in a few specific ways. How long does it take to get an MBA on a fast track? As little as 12 to 18 months, but each route depends on the school's own rules, so check before you plan around it.

• Choose an accelerated track. Villanova's Fast-Track hybrid MBA can be finished "in as soon as 18 months," and Babson offers one- and two-year full-time options.
• Use a business background. UF's one-year MBA is built for business majors and requires 32 credits rather than 48.
• Ask about course waivers. Boston College says eligible candidates may waive up to five MBA courses, a maximum of 15 credits, based on prior coursework or professional certification.
• Do not count on transfer credit. UF states that credits "cannot be transferred from another institution or program," so policies vary sharply between schools.

Once you know how long does it take to get an MBA in the format you can commit to, the next question is which program. Across the 978 business administration master's programs in federal IPEDS data, 462 offer an online option. Our rankings let you filter by the format that fits your timeline:

• Best MBA programs, led by the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Florida
• Best online MBA programs for part-time schedules
• Most affordable MBA programs and cheapest online MBA programs
• MHA vs MBA if you are weighing a healthcare-specific master's