If you're thinking about an MBA, you might want to stop and ask yourself these questions:

• Do I enjoy solving problems?
• Do I have a good idea what I want to do with my MBA?
• Am I ready to work hard at an MBA?
• Can I get into a good MBA program?

If you're going to enter into this expensive, multi-year commitment, possibly losing valuable career-development time, you want to be sure you have a good rationale. Think about what kind of career you want to pursue, and how that affects your choice of major. Try reading, or at least browsing, some business books in different subject areas such as management, finance, operations, etc. See what interests you (and make sure something does!)

Now select a few target programs and check them out. Look at their rankings, what their different options are (full-time, part-time, executive), and what kind of GMAT scores students have (you should be able to find the average somewhere). You're going to need to do well on the GMAT. If you can't handle the very basic content of this exam, you're probably not well-suited to an MBA. Try a practice exam and see how you do. If you don't do well, there are a lot of prep books and courses you can use.

After you've done the research, try listing everything out. What's your gut feeling at this point?

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).