Students who major in education or law as undergraduates are more likely to be accepted into top-tier business schools than those pursuing marketing or health degrees, according to an analysis from the MBA Data Guru. Jeremy Shinewald, founder of mbaMission, says liberal arts majors often have a broad understanding of the world, from history to culture.

University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business are the latest business schools to begin accepting the Executive Assessment for their executive MBA programs as an alternative to the GMAT exam. Learn more.

Women have made gains in some countries in areas of equality in the workforce in the past year, but disparities remain, according to The Economist's glass-ceiling index. The index is based on several factors, including business-school applications and educational attainment.

A study of Harvard Business School graduates found that over the past 40 years just 13% of black female Harvard MBAs reached the most senior executive ranks, compared with 40% of their non-black peers. Researchers also found that women made many lateral career moves to climb the ladder, and noted that many found there was little room for error in leadership roles.

Errol D'Souza, the new director of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, says he's focusing on more aggressive marketing to recruiters to connect students with jobs. Other priorities D'Souza outlines in this Q&A include hiring more faculty and expanding the school's global footprint.

A new Gallup survey shows that 42% of MBA graduates and 23% of law-school graduates feel the cost of their education was worth it, while 64% of those who earned doctoral degrees said the same. The data also show that nearly half of doctoral-degree earners said they had mentors who helped them, but only 14% of MBA graduates felt the same way.

Big data has changed how college admissions officials are recruiting and enrolling students, says David Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Admissions leaders offer their best practices for using data to identify fertile recruitment areas and identify potentially successful students.

A new Brookings Institute study shows that 17% of students left college in 2014 with more than $50,000 in federal student debt compared to 2% in 1992. The data also show that in 2014, more than 20% of those borrowers borrowed to attend for-profit schools, and for the first time they are now beginning to fall behind on payments.

MBA applicants should be ready to answer some hard questions from admissions officials, including what their weaknesses are and times they have failed, writes MBA admissions consultant Stacy Blackman. In this blog post, Blackman offers strategies for crafting strong answers to these and other questions.

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