The good news: it's not that "hard." The bad news: it's a fair amount of work. Compared to law or medicine, business is a snap. There is a lot less reading than in law or medical school, less content to be committed to memory, and, of course, fewer courses.

If you're at least decent at math and can think critically, the majority of the b-school curriculum will be fairly straightforward. That doesn't mean it won't require work; accounting, though not intellectually rigorous, simply requires a certain amount of raw effort.

If you have an undergraduate degree in math or engineering, b-school shouldn't be a problem. Arts majors with math anxiety may have a little more trouble with some of the math-intensive courses such as stats.

Even if you're concerned about your analytical abilities, you can take solace in the fact that, once admitted, it's very hard to fail out of an MBA program. The schools have a vested interest in keeping you around to pay that tuition, as well as graduating you and getting you into Citigroup or McKinsey or the World Bank. Or even the White House (though one shudders to think about Dubya's classroom performances).