Best-Graduate-Schools

How does a prospective student make a choice among graduate schools? Here, five former students tell U.S. News why they chose to attend their particular schools. Why I Picked the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School  Lauren Cruz, 2015 graduate and marketing associate at Ethicon UNC Kenan-Flagler embraces diversity, collaboration and teamwork and offers excellent educational and experiential opportunities. In assessing MBA programs, I looked for these strengths as I didn't have a traditional undergrad business education. After college, I founded and operated a personal training studio and became enthralled with running my own enterprise. I felt Kenan-Flagler's program would build my leadership skills while surrounding me with the passionate and open-minded students and faculty I sought. My classwork was flanked by great opportunities: a Leadership Immersion course, study abroad in Barcelona and a bu...

These five pioneers are among the law schools overhauling programs to build in extensive hands-on practice.     Law school continues to be more of a buyer's market than in years past, as many programs invent new ways to reel in applicants who've been wary of the poor job outlook and steep tuitions. The legal education community is still trying to regain its footing after the Great Recession forced firms to radically tighten their belts, shutting out many new grads and sending applications into a spiral. Among the more unconventional curricular experiments law schools will keep an eye on are several new programs. The Mitchell Hamline School of Law – a merger of Minnesota's William Mitchell College of Law and Hamline University School of Law – will offer a first-of-its-kind hybrid curriculum, for example. Students will take online courses for 12 or 13 weeks a semester and visit the campus 10 times during the four-year program to participate in skills work...

The costs of studying to become a doctor can really add up.       ​If you dream of becoming a doctor, you already know that you’ll be spending a lot more time in school than most people. While four-year bachelor’s degrees are the ultimate goal for many college students, they’re just the first step on the road to a career in medicine. Your undergraduate education will be followed by an intensive four years in medical school. And after you earn your M.D. or D.O., you’ll spend three to five years in residency learning a specialty. It’s a long, difficult process, and costs can add up. While salaries for medical school graduates are among the highest for any profession, the median total debt for new doctors was $175,000 in 2013. Fortunately, there are scholarships for medical school students that can help you focus more on your studies and less on your tuition bills. [Get tips on choosing the right major for medical school.] As with...

Some prospective students may be eligible for a fee waiver that covers application fees, experts say.     There are two major financial costs most prospective medical students face in their quest to become a doctor. The first occurs when they're trying to become a competitive medical school applicant and spend thousands on MCAT preparation classes or a postbaccalaureate program. The second comes once they're enrolled in a school and billed for tuition, fees and sometimes health insurance. The total was as high as $82,251 for some students during the 2013-2014 school year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Between these two financial hurdles is another expense that applicants must also plan for: application fees. [Find out which medical school grads have the most debt.] "It is expensive to apply to medical school," says Thomas Levitan, vice president of research at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Me...

Students who like to volunteer may join the Peace Corps to reduce medical student debt.         Becoming a doctor is an expensive career path. Among 2012 medical school graduates, 86 percent had debt. The median debt for indebted graduates was $170,000, according to a 2013 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges. “Debt levels for indebted medical school graduates and medical school cost of attendance have both increased faster than inflation over the last 20 years,” the report states. For prospective students who want an M.D. but don't want the student loans that often come with it, there's hope. There are a number of ways to offset the cost of medical education during and after school. 1. Plan to specialize in primary care: To lure prospective medical students into primary care – an area of medicine that often comes with long hours and a less-competitive salary – a number of schools offer schol...

Costly MBA Programs for Out-of-State Students Students who aren't local paid almost $50,000 a year or more to attend these schools. At UVA's Darden School of Business, out-of-state MBA candidates paid $59,268 in tuition and fees for the 2014-2015 year. The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College , The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matters to you in your college or grad school search. A state school is usually the go-to institution for students who want to cut education costs. Students who attend a public school in a state that's not theirs, however, often pay a steep price. Aspiring MBAs from outside the...

Consider career goals and academic concentration, not just rank, when creating your b-school short list. Think about the company or industry you want to work in, and find out whether they recruit at your target business schools. People typically pursue an MBA because they are looking to improve their career opportunities and increase their future income. What some applicants don't consider is that you can achieve both of those objectives even if you don't make it into the business programs at Harvard, Wharton or Stanford. While rankings are a valuable piece of the puzzle when you're narrowing down your school list, don't get hung up on the top few programs. It's more important to be pragmatic and align your expectations with the MBA programs that match your particular profile, particularly if your GMAT score isn't through the roof or your career trajectory has stalled out. MBA programs update their career or recruiting reports annually and post t...