Crummer recommends that EMBA students spend eight to ten hours per week to studying throughout the 20-month program, in addition to the one Friday and Saturday they spend in class each month.

But as studying for the EMBA does not only look like completing readings and preparing presentations with their cohort, it also looks like the actions they carry out in their roles in the workplace, many find this time requirement to be more than manageable.

Up front, we'll say that classrooms feel fundamentally different when you're a leader outside of them than how you likely remember they felt when you were last a student. So while the EMBA does include a rigorous academic approach to learning to become a more effective leader, and your coursework will require you to to pass exams, complete assigned readings, and more, most EMBA students quickly discover that returning to school provides little challenge at all, and that they even enjoy the work.

Officially, our EMBA students an 8% increase in their salaries within one year of completing their program. But for an experienced business leader, that metric tells only a fraction of a much richer ROI story—one that should also account for the development of personal leadership skills that result in stronger, faster decision-making, more effective leadership of teams and employees in a student’s existing role, and practical progress toward solving for the daily challenges that eat away at a leader’s attention and time while they’re on the clock.