Where  – there are quite a few criteria  which sprout up when you consider these choices. There are established educational  Institutes providing High Quality MBA’s and  there are  a few colleges which would not necessarily come  into your mind unless  you have done thorough research but which match if not exceed the Quality of these established players.
When making  a  choice of an MBA its its very important to look within and try to find out the reasons for doing an MBA and  then letting this reason be the  guiding factor for you.  Here are some o the reasons that I have come across

1) For better  job prospects : this  is a questionable driving force for joining an MBA  , its always better  to have a  more  well thought approach to an MBA  . An MBA is an investment in yourself and if chosen well any MBA would add  this value to you .  But if this is your prime reason for joining an MBA you need to reconsider to make a better choice of school.

2) Have a Business Idea need tools to  make it into a reality  – Well if you are the creative sorts and have business ideas , no matter how far-fetched they seem it would be   a good Idea to join an MBA  programme which has specialization in Entrepreneurship.  There  are many schools who offer this .  Do remember  that sometimes this process can be disillusional and can bring you to  more concrete reality. So an idea might be rejected but from the MBA you would learn to build more  grounded business plans and to be a better critique of the business plan.

3) Haven’t got a clue but am sure an MBA will help  - Its a better idea to choose schools which offer a more holistic  approach to the MBA , an MBA  can be used as a navigational tool , to chart out a career path for yourself as you move ahead in the MBA.  Here its more about a trial an error methods and I would advise aspirants driven  by this motivation to focus on the MBA  experience and make a choice within the programme.

3) Well I think I have tried my hand in strategy and  I want to learn more about it / Want to join a consultancy  - For people who have given deep thought to their past experiences  its a good idea to Join an MBA  which is strong in strategy eg Harvard , Strathclyde etc.  The process of the MBA would equip you with tools to identify the need for , create , implement  and to test out Strategies.

4) I want to specialize   the answer for such people is simple choose a school renowned  for your specialization ad go for it full hearted.

Other  things to consider  -   Duration of course 1  yr – 2 yrs, Return of Income, Class size , ability to network

An MBA  is a learning experience its not so much about the  actual learning its more about how you apply this  in life.Its not an educational course  its a course in changing your life , I would recomment it to all , but its important to know or to identify the takebacks that you need from the  course well in advance.

We are doing lot of multi-criteria decision making in our day to day life.  For instance if you want to buy a house, you will have ‘m’ number of criteria’s and at the same time there will be ‘n’ number of stakeholder who influence directly or indirectly to your decision. Stakeholders are the people who involved in the decision making process. This include you, your wife, father, mother, renting people you are giving your house for rent, your employer etc.

I will give a vague idea how to do MCDA? The first process to do is do a “C.A.U.S.E” analysis. Criteria, Alternatives, Uncertainty, Stakeholder and Environmental / External entity.  List down all the factors for CAUSE, bring down the stakeholders and prioritize them considering their power and interests. After CAUSE analysis you have to list down and form all clusters.

The second process is constructing a decision tree, see the decision tree below for the example mentioned above. Once you build decision tree cross check with the cluster if there is any point missed out.

The next step is to assign values for the alternatives for the leaf nodes from values 0 to 100. For most feasible one you should give 0 and for least feasible one you should give 1oo. When we assign values to the decision tree take consider things in mind, the values given should be in the ratio of the cost affected / criteria affects you or the decision.

The fourth step is to give scores or weight to the nodes from right to left. This can be done by considering all the stakeholders and their scores to the nodes. You can take the average of the weights of all stakeholders. If there are numerous nodes in the right hand side  select few which is of top priority and assign the weights. After that you can assign values to other by considering and assigning values to its families.

Once weightage is done you will get a alternatives in the top position according to the weight given. The next step is to analyze robustness of the decision. This can be done by analyzing the sensitivity across different criterion. If majority of the sensitivity graphs shows the same result as final decision you can say that your decision is robust.

Lots of tools are available to do multi-criterion decision analysis. I am using the software called VISA.