There are many resources available to prospective graduate students looking for the right school: ranking systems, advisers, guides, and each school's own informational materials. It is more helpful, however, to pay attention to the reputation of the specific program you are interested in attending than that of the university overall. Thus, your search for the right school will really be a search for the right program, and the resources you use to compare programs will vary based on the degree you are seeking.  

Some publications rank a variety of graduate programs, such as business, engineering, medicine, law, etc. You can use these lists as a starting point for your search for the right school, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend just choosing schools number one, two and three on the list and sending out your application materials. For one thing, it is usually important to include a “safety school” or two. Also, no ranking system can really tell you whether a school’s specific faculty, curriculum, and location will fit your personality and desires. For that kind of advice, you need a more specific or personal guide or adviser. 

One of the most popular listings of ranked graduate programs is the U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools” yearly list. What is especially useful is that they publish the methodology behind the ranking system. For example, one important thing is that the rankings are “based on two types of data: expert opinion about program quality, and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research, and students.” For more information about the methodology, you read the full article here, and to view the 2008 rankings, visit the
“Best Grad Schools Index”.

Beyond simple rankings, there are also in-depth guides published which provide the essential information about many of the programs within a certain academic or professional discipline. Some of the information these guides provide include the location, the faculty, the admission requirements and the course work required for the program. Depending on your area of study, you will often be able to find an exhaustive guide in your campus or local bookstore, or especially online.  

The type of guide you need will depend on the type of degree you seek. There are two different types of Master’s degrees you may be interested in earning: academic and professional. An academic Master’s degree, such as the Master of science (M.S.) or Master of Arts (M.A.), is usually earned in the traditional arts, sciences and humanities. For example, a student might earn an M.A. in literature or an M.S. in geology. Many M.S. and M.A. programs employ a combination of research and coursework in order to prepare students to go on and earn a Ph.D., although some academic Master’s degree programs are terminal.  

The goal of the professional Master’s degree is for the graduate program to lead students directly into their chosen profession. These degrees usually are terminal, meaning they are not designed to lead to earning a more advanced degree afterward. A few examples of professional master’s degrees are the master of business administration (M.B.A.), the master of fine arts (M.F.A.) and the master of education (M.Ed.).  

If you are interested in attending such a master’s program, you will want to find out whether one of the aforementioned guides is available to help you compare and contrast programs. For example, if you are seeking an M.F.A. in creative writing, you will want to buy An Insider's Guide to Creative Writing Programs: Choosing the Right MFA or MA Program, Colony, Residency, Grant or Fellowship by Amy Holman. If you are seeking an M.B.A., you may want to buy Peterson’s MBA Programs for the current year or How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs by Richard Montauk. If you want to earn an M.Ed., you could check out another Peterson’s Guide, Peterson's Graduate Programs in Business, Education, Health, Information Studies, Law and Social Work.  

As is apparent from the above title, Peterson’s has guides for a wide variety of programs, including Ph.D. programs in the arts, sciences and humanities; degrees in the legal profession; engineering degrees such as the Ch.E., Mech.E. or E.E.; and many, many others. Although the Peterson’s guides do cover a lot of ground, they are not the only resource, especially for the more popular programs.  

There are countless guides to choosing the right law school, and there are even guides on the law school experience. The Best 170 Law Schools by Princeton Review, Ultimate Guide to Law Schools by Anne McGrath and Staff of U.S. News, and Law School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience: By Students, for Students by Robert H. Miller are just a few of the books you can use to research programs all over the country.  

Robert H. Miller also joined together with Dan Bissel and Harold M. Friedman to write a book entitled Med School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Medical School Experience: By Students, for Students. If you plan on going to medical school, The Best 168 Medical Schools by Princeton Review, and U.S. News Ultimate Guide to Medical Schools by Josh Fischman are two of the guides you can purchase, and there are many others available as well.  

No matter how thorough a guide you purchase, show your friends and review at all hours of the night, such a guide cannot tell you everything you need to know about a school. After you use it to select a reasonable number of universities for your list, you need to research the programs’ web sites. This is helpful not only because the program itself will offer more information than a guide, but because the information on the web site is more generally more current.  

After you make it through the application process, and you get accepted to some of those schools on your list, you should really spend the money to go and visit them before enrolling, because, of course, no ranking, book or web site compares to actually touring the campus, meeting the professors and sitting in on a class. As you can see, the process of finding the right program can be very involved and time-consuming, but if you get discouraged, just remember you could be spending anywhere between two years and the rest of your life working and studying in the school of your choice. It is an important and exciting decision.