Penning down some factors which one needs to ponder over while considering an MBA abroad .

The relative weightage of each of these depends on the individual’s preferences / background etc .

The factors ( not necessarily in any order ) are :

1. Financing / Funding : Options for financing through bank loans / Scholarships may vary from college to college  .

Another crucial dependency could be on the liquid cash each institute expects you to have .Some colleges in Australia ( like AGSM ) has high requirements ( A friend of mine had to ensure that he had 15+ lakhs in his bank account 6 months prior to admission . The prescribed amount in bank depends on the scholarship you get as well  )  in this regard .

Also one needs to factor in the living expenses as well in addition to the fees .

There were three categories of financing required:

• Programme-related: These were the tuition fees, the living expenses, and the medical insurance (mandated by some countries).
• Application-related: These included the testing fees for GMAT and TOEFL/ IELTS, the prep material for the tests, cost of an application for each B-school, cost of transcripts and attestations, scholarship/ loan documentation costs, courier/ postage charges and stationery.
• Visa-related: These were the visa application fees, documentation costs and liquidity maintenance costs.

2.Visa regulations which determines how long you can stay after the MBA , as well as the easiness to get a job in the corresponding country .

3 .Ranking of the institute in the branch / choice of your intrest .. For eg , a college like Babson manages to merely scrap into FT list top 100 colleges , but is No:1 in entrepreneurship !

Some experts say when apply for 5 colleges at the time of GMAT ,  perhaps it’s a good idea to the distribution spread uniformly like 2 in top10 , 1-2 top 20 , 1-2 top30 or so …

4 .1 year course Vs 2 year course !

1 your course would really help saving valuable bucks & typically has higher ROIs .

The  1 yr courses are mostly  offered in Europe , UK , Australia ( 16 months rather ) etc ..

5 .Proximity :

If have proximity to India /  cheap MBA among your top priorities ,  then ISB or  NUS etc are good options to go for .

6 .Peer learning

This can’t be over – emphasised in an MBA course .ROI / payback period / NPV all need to make sense .But more than these nuggets , the quality & compatibility of peer learning needs to throughly examined . For eg , one can even check the % of Indians in previous batches as reference for compatibity while quality can gauged from alumini progess / profiles .

MBA interview tips :

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2009/jan/20personal-interview-prep-tips.htm