First off, many applicants do consider MBA rankings as a key input into their school selection process. With good reason. We consider MBA rankings too. But—and this is important—we belive these should be ONE factor in your decision making process. Not the ONLY aspect of your decision making process.  Leading entities ranking MBA programs typically evaluate a range of factors relevant to the MBA experience: from quality of instruction, to student/teacher ratios, to alumni resources, to prestige, to post-graduation employment rates, to starting salaries, and a range of other inputs. But the truth is that some of these criteria are probably more important to YOU than others. For this podcast, we encourage you to put down the rankings sheet (at least for the time being) and consider 12 specific questions to help you identify schools that might be the best fits for YOU. This podcast is the first of a two-part segment.