For me there were 5 overriding considerations:
1) Cost - Can I fund this myself without forfeiting my retirement?
2) Quality of content - Good instructors? Good learning environment?
3) Access to information - How friendly are the admissions people?
4) Type of delivery - Internet versus on-campus versus tele-conferencing
5) Cost - it's that important to me....
I did a lot of research on the interweb. I read a lot of online brochures and talked to people who had completed their EMBA. I ruled out online classes as it requires a lot of motivation to set time aside and keep to a schedule. As the reigning King of Procrastination, that would never work. I narrowed my selection down to two schools - Queens University and the University of Calgary.
Queens University has two EMBA programs: their "National" program and their dual EMBA program with Cornell. In the latter program you end up graduating with 2 MBA's! Queens' programs are consistently rated as some of the best programs in the world. The content is also delivered via tele-conference which didn't appeal to me. The end result of the tele-conference setup, is that you really bond with the 6-10 others in your home city, whereas local programs allow you to network with ~50 people.
It seemed attractive, but in the end it was just too much expense. When it was all said and done, the Queens National course came out at $20k more and the Cornell program at over $40k more (than the local varieties). If money were not an object in this decision, then Queens would (likely) be the choice.
The University of Calgary has a good program and has a lot of advantages given that it is local to me. The program has received a lot of press lately as an 'up and coming' school and is getting a good reputation. It was listed as one of the top 50 EMBA schools by the Financial Times of London. It also has a lot of alumni who are local business leaders running large (very large) oil and gas companies. Since the program is local to me, I get to interact with other students and professors in person, which means a lot to me. I was able to sit in on an afternoon of classes with minimum disruption to the class, talk to some current students and get a "vibe" from the environment.
The admission people are VERY nice and helpful. I'm not just saying that - they really did help me. In one case, the company that was running the GMAT exams in Calgary decided that they weren't going to administer the exams anymore so there wasn't anywhere to write the exam. They were very patient and gave me options. It's so funny how the little things really add up.
The winner: The University of Calgary EMBA
EMBA's have a very different application process - you don't apply to a million schools and go through several rounds of interviews to find out if you are accepted. For me at least, it was one application, one essay and one set of references. This made my life a lot easier.
My application is complete and sitting with the Admissions Committee of the U of Calgary - I hope to hear soon. Fingers crossed.
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One thing you need to consider given the large cost of an MBA is the cohort you are going to be studying with and building relationships with. This is one thing fresh-grad students forget. Generally EMBA is for experienced professionals with multiple years of experience and probably in middle management. They have already run projects, gone through reorgs, and are in middle management (Directorship) and have done budgets, accounting, finance at multiple companies. This is why EMBA generally require less credit hours. You don't need to do noob basics again.
The CIO for a fairly large national company told me once: Never pay for your own MBA, get the company to pay for it. For an EMBA, the cohort can't be beat. You will study and build relationships with Directors, C level executives, Heads of state (no joke). The school makes a big difference because the caliber of cohort may not go to a local Calgary school. U of C, you will most likely go to class with fresh grad engineering students. When you graduate they won't be getting you any jobs. That's the whole point of networking. For the extra 40K. Worth it. If you think you can't make up the 40K, you may want to reconsider why you are taking an MBA in the first place.
By the time you are able to apply the MBA concepts, you should be in middle management and not an idealistic fresh grad.
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