According to BusinessWeek, a good employment market for newly minted MBAs is the main reason behind the increase. "On-campus recruiting, job placement, and post-MBA salaries are all up," the magazine says. "And with 25- to 29-year-olds making up an increasingly larger percentage of the population in the U.S. and in Asia, the raw numbers of students eligible to apply to B-school is set to keep application numbers up throughout the decade."

Some 21 percent of full-time MBA programs in the U.S. saw an increase in applications from women compared to 2005. This implies that special outreach efforts used by about half the programs are paying off: They were 25 percent more likely to show increases in applications from women, BusinessWeek said.

Most of the international growth comes from India and China, though the number of applicants from Korea showed a notable increase. And while more institutions overseas are offering MBAs, Rod Garcia, director of master's admissions at MIT's Sloan School of Management, told BusinessWeek that graduate programs in the U.S. remain the "gold standard."