Editors Note: The following is a guest post by our friends at Access MBA.
When choosing between business schools in Europe and the United States, the main thing to keep in mind is that the decision is very personal. Take a good look at the available options and do not let yourself be influenced by rankings. If your background fits in better with a school that may be a little outside the top 10, 20 or 30, don’t let that worry you. Here are some of the advantages European business schools have over their overseas counterparts.
Less Expensive. The two-year program is still considered to be the American standard for the full-time MBA. In Europe, the duration of an MBA program is one year or eighteen months, which becomes less expensive than a two-year program and entails lower overall living costs. Nevertheless the quality of the programs can be very high, which explains the growing number of triple-accredited business schools in Europe.
More Specialized MBA Programs. Europe boasts schools that are known for certain specific core competencies. Ranked the best European business school by the Financial Times in 2012, IE Business School is, for example, the perfect place to develop your career with its focus on innovation, diversity and entrepreneurship.
Last week, Bloomberg Businessweek published two articles on declining MBA application volumes, going so far as to call the current application environment a “drought.” In its first article (“
The great irony here, of course, is that the training you get as an MBA is exactly the training that sharpens your ability to think critically about arguments like this one. In fact, that’s what the GMAT actually tests with its Critical Reasoning section. Just to demonstrate, I’d like to break down this infographic from top to bottom, using the same strategy I teach my students: pointing out the (flawed) assumptions necessary to conclude that an MBA is overvalued.
Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 5 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can 
We hate and love to admit it, but business school is like a weird marriage-making commune.
