I received a call today from an admissions counselor about a graduate school fair I attended last week (thanks Idealist!) and it reminded me: graduate school season is officially upon us. There is no denying it now, it is time to embrace the future and think about life beyond Wesleyan! But where to begin?

Applying to graduate school is quite different from applying to an undergraduate institution. The rules have all changed, now it is not only about overall prestige, but about the ranking schools have in specific programs. I knew someone last year who had the seemingly overachieving goal to get into a sociology program better than Yale’s. She also informed me that in the field of sociology, Yale does not have a particularly prestigious reputation, which is why she ended up going to one of the highest ranked sociology program in Minnesota. This anecdote is to illustrate that, for graduate schools, you may need to do even more legwork than you did the first time around.

But don’t despair! We would never leave you all by yourself to navigate this complex and mystifying process by yourself! In fact, NetImpact has recently published an entire 240+ page document called “Business as Unusual: The Student Guide to Graduate Programs.” This document is the product of surveying over 3,000 graduate students in MBA programs across the world about the strengths of their programs. Students were asked about the program’s strengths in non-profit management, corporate responsibility, energy and clean technology, impact investing, international development, and social enterprise. Students were also asked to rate their programs in terms of sustainability and social impact. Using these measures, NetImpact’s guide is meant to help students begin the process of thinking about graduate school. And if the 250 page document seems daunting at first, skip to page 242 for a quick list of the top rated schools.

The full NetImpact Guide can be found here.

We hope this information will help you narrow down those choices before December rolls around!

Check out the first post of our Graduate School series here.