M.B.A. Programs That Get You Where You Want to Go

With some 13,000 graduate schools of business across the globe, the M.B.A. degree has clearly become a commodity.

Even among elite schools, courses and case studies are pretty much water from the same well (i.e., finance, operations, marketing, accounting). So how do you choose? By using the rankings? Which ones? The Economist’s? Businessweek’s? The Financial Times’s? And if you do, how do you tell the difference between a school ranked No. 6 and a school ranked No. 7?