MBA vs Masters In Business
The MBA degree was created in the United States, where historically there were - and are - very few stand-alone Master's degree programs. The study of business was never seen as a true academic pursuit, and there were, at that time, no reputable schools which offered a Bachelors degree in Business. In the United States, the MBA was an innovation: a post-experience degree for executives of large corporations, a program focussing on the subjects and skills necessary to administer a large and complex industrial operation. Thus, the Masters in Business Administration was born - at Harvard University, in 1908.
More recently, the best business schools in the USA began to compete for applicants in Europe and the rest of the world. And the MBA went truly global when independent European schools - notably INSEAD and the London Business School - created reputable, stand-alone MBA programs of their own.
Elsewhere in Europe, the development of business studies still follows the local tradition, and most EU-based schools offer an MSc in Business. Subject-matter wise, many of these Masters programs are similar to the MBA, but with this important difference: work experience is not seen as a central requirement for the MSc - as it still is for the MBA.
And there is one additional difference between a top-ranked MBA program and most MSc degree studies: MBA applicants need to submit scores from all four sections of the GMAT exam, whereas there are many MSc programs that require only the results of the quant and verbal sections, and many more that require the GMAT score only in special circumstances, such as when the applicant did not complete a first degree in a business study.