According a new report from the Graduate Management Admission Council – or GMAC – for the first time in five years, a majority of American business schools are seeing more applicants from here in the U.S. For a while, international students were keeping numbers up, but those numbers have stabilized.

But an MBA from a decent business school can cost $100,000. So, why pay that much? MBA students say ROI — return on investment.

Erica Larson, an MBA student at the University of Texas at Austin, said more and more job ads demand the qualification.

“MBA preferred, MBA required,” she said. “You’re even starting to see, ‘MBA from a top-tier institution.’”

In the current economic upswing, an MBA can be worth a lot, said Anjani Jain, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management.

“It does depend on the growth of the economy,” he said. “Because that’s where these high level professional jobs come from.” 

But getting an MBA is about making more money, right? Dan Macklin, co-founder of SoFi, a company that makes loans to students, said the MBA students who snag those jobs get a good return on their investment.

“Whatever your undergraduate degree, an MBA is valuable to you and increases your earning potential,” he said.

For graduates in subjects like English and history, data showed an MBA boosted earning potential by an average of 90 percent, said Macklin.