Maybe you’ve heard about a particular master’s during your studies, have friends or colleagues who have touted the transformative benefits of a school, or are looking to transform or expand your career. Whatever’s the case, usually you’ll begin your investigation by looking at a ranking. If you’re in the US, you may look to US News; in the UK, you’ll probably first turn to The Economist; while in Europe and Asia, you may be brought to The Financial Times. However, a ranking alone is a poor source for identifying ideal programs. Let’s look at the latest MiM rankings from the top 2 global agencies, ordered based on the average standing:

While a small number of schools consistently rank in the top 10, many experience large disparities between the ranking services. For instance, SKEMA is 5th according to The Economist but 22nd according to FT. What’s more, a total of 7 master’s programs appear in only one of the rankings. Why are the differences so great? Rankings are far more art than science. The measures, methods and weights of all ranking components, even when changed marginally, lead to significant disparities in the outcomes of participating schools. Not only that, but the rankings experience large volatility year-to-year, with schools dropping or rising dozens of positions, which isn’t true-to-life as quality among master’s does not change meaningfully on an annual basis. Moreover, many schools just experience ‘rankings fatigue,’ and choose not to participate; you won’t find powerful US universities like Kellogg or Duke in the above lists.

But these publications do serve a purpose. Rankings are good for understating your universe of options and for gleaning the background data they provide on schools, such as salary information, alumni location, common job categories, etc. To accurately select a school, you need to look deeper into your possibilities. What’s the culture of this school: is it more team-based or more competitive? Does the program orient itself towards consulting, finance, data analytics or something else? Does it have a large cohort or a small one? It might even be the case that a Master in Finance would be as useful as one in Management or even Data Science. There are many questions about the program, its students, its partners and post-master’s job opportunities that you’ll need to answer before you can arrive at a ‘ranking’ that works for your future.

If you’re targeting the most exclusive schools (Princeton, MIT, HEC, St.Gallen, LBS, etc.), you have to first understand who your competition will be. For the most part, they’ll be made up of an elite group of individuals from around the world, with outstanding academic performance a. At times, 20 of these select applicants will be vying for just one seat at a prestigious university. Your goal is to make yourself stand out as much as possible from this crowd.

One part of the equation seems straightforward enough, and you’ll see it mentioned time and time again: the application components (GMAT/GRE, CV, essays, recommendation letters, and the interview). Of course, nothing is that simple, because it’s the information behind all of these parts that admissions teams are analyzing:

To make yourself stand out, you’ll need to discover how to best present and in what amounts every aspect of your history: personal, professional and academic. And, if you have any weaknesses, you’ll need to attack them head on to succeed.

Admissions Circle Experts can work to help you identify the right master’s programs, prepare powerful applications, and deliver effective interviews, while supporting every other requirement of your particular admissions process. The advantages are three-fold:

• We significantly increase your chances of entry to top master’s programs, which in turn magnifies your odds of receiving merit-based scholarships and fellowships

• We dramatically reduce the time you spend on the application process, thereby allowing you to more efficiently carry out all of the necessary steps (test prep, essay writing, etc.)

• We help you realize your potential—especially when beginning your master’s journey at an earlier period—; identify schools that better match your needs; and even develop pre-application strategies to modify your profile, making you more attractive to target universities

Naturally, every case is unique, so to better identify how admissions consulting can help you reach your goals, it’s best to start at the beginning: help us understand who you are and what you want to become.