Hi there,

With 10 years work experience (IT) in Asia, I am now looking at an UK based 1 yr full time MBA course. By achieving this business education background, I hope to better extend my career as business connection between UK (EU) and Asia, preferrably myself based in UK.

I have little clues to filter out a shortlist of the business school, except the ranking. A few of questions hopefully somehone can help with.
1. Aiming at the program of 2012, I should be able to get a IELTS score of 6.5 in time, but may fail GMAT in such short period of time. Can I just exclude those requiring GMAT, and focus only on the ones without GMAT requirement, to get the shortlist 1? Given it makes sense, where can I find such a school list?

2. How should I make use of the biz school rankings to make the list shorter? Assume high ranking schools set higher entry requirements in English/transcript/management experience/tuition, for which I self-evaluated Average. So, is it wise in my case to apply for the schools with UK Biz ranking of 20-50, to increase the possiblity getting the offer?

3. Having said that, could anyone help to add other filter criteria to be considered, as I still have to single out 3 or so out of dozens? For example, would location of UK/proportion of Int' students/faculties, etc be issues to take into account?

4. In general, do the UK employers attach importance to School Ranking in recruitment practice? In Asia, they do.

5. The average age for MBA students is 29 or younger. Being 35 in the year of 2012, I am a bit concerned I will look out of place in the class. Or some schools have older average age than others?
A friend in this board recommended EMBA to better fit my age (thanks btw), I haven't checked that out yet, but would assume EMBA requires even higher entry requirements, longer study term (1.5 yrs), thus higher overall expense to afford.

Thanks ahead for anyone's input!
iytycyc