With the number of programmes proliferating, business schools have been scrambling to woo students ? and company recruiters ? by trying to distinguish themselves from the rest. Thus more and more schools are departing from the once-hallowed ?case method? established by the Harvard Business School, in which desk-bound students analyse the situation of companies, real or fictitious, and make recommendations. Instead, schools are offering opportunities to, say, set up and run actual companies, or take electives in other schools within the campus.

?There was a time when the MBA was one size fits all,? says John Fernandes, president of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International, which accredits business schools. ?Now, schools are trying to be very good at fewer specialities and less generic.?

In this changing landscape, how does a student find the right educational fit? Of course, time and money often make the choice for you; faced with the cost of tuition and the need to work, nearly 80 per cent of MBA candidates attend part-time, often subsidised by their employers. Grade point averages and admission test scores may also limit your options. But all else being equal ?which it rarely is ? here are some programmes to consider, depending on what you want to do.

Are you a master of the universe?

Most newly minted business-school graduates begin their careers in a department like product management or finance. But if your goal is to move into general management in 5 to 10 years and ultimately lead an organisation, it makes sense to get a strong foundation. Most of the perennially top-ranked graduate business schools ? Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Kellogg at Northwestern, Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania ? still adhere to the traditional core curriculum, which is meant to provide an overview of the entire corporation.

Students get little or no choice of courses in the first year, typically taking multiple classes in each of some half-dozen categories ? strategy, operations, finance, accounting, marketing, leadership and organisational behaviour. In the second year, the universe widens to include electives. ?We sometimes describe the first year as the old East Germany and the second as a free market,? says Joseph L. Badaracco Jr., chairman of the elective curriculum at the Harvard Business School. ?We're very much a general management school. A lot of students come here because they want to run something.? There?s an additional advantage to mastering business basics: trendy concentrations can be a blot on one?s r?sum? when a hot market cools. Sharon Hoffman, associate dean and director of Stanford?s MBA programme, notes that the school was criticised for not focusing on Internet-related business during the dot-com bubble. ?But we said, ?The fundamentals remain the fundamentals?,? she recalls.

Do you have a particular passion?

Many business schools are adding ?tracks? to their curriculum that play to their particular strengths and, they hope, to a marketplace that wants MBAs prepared to hit the ground running. If you already know you want to work in a specific field, this could be a good fit.

The specialised curriculum that the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon rolled out last year, for example, includes tracks in biotechnology, computational marketing, technology leadership, operations strategy and management, management of innovation and product development, and wealth and asset management. The idea is to build not scientists and engineers but people who can manage them.

Are you still looking for a field of interest?

While all graduate business schools have greatly expanded their lists of electives, some MBA programmes make a point of giving students free range, not only in the business school but in other schools within the university.

The University of Chicago, that champion of free-market economics, boasts on its website that ?we offer the most flexible curriculum of any top business school in the world?, with ?very few required courses?.

In sweeping changes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Sloan School of Management last year halved the number of required courses to a half dozen. What?s more, MIT has added a number of courses that are only six weeks long and divided the traditional 13-week semester into two sessions, with an ?innovation? week in between when professors present their research. This schedule allows students to sample a greater variety of subjects. Compared with the track approach, the MIT programme ?gives students more opportunity to explore, and also to customise their own curriculum,? says Andrew W. Lo, director of the school?s Laboratory for Financial Engineering.

Do you want to create a business of your own?

If you were the kind of child who couldn?t wait to set up a lemonade stand each summer ? and maybe took over the neighbour?s stand as well ? then you may be interested in one of the growing number of hands-on programmes. The Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, which has a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship, is adding a programme in January in which student teams create and run their own companies for six months. At the F. W. Olin School of Business at Babson College, entrepreneurship is embedded in the core curriculum, with year-long consulting projects for local companies.

Are your sights set on the global marketplace?

These days, it?s the rare MBA programme that doesn?t include an opportunity to study abroad. An MBA candidate at one of two dozen Jesuit universities participating in a consortium, including Fordham, Boston College and Loyola University Chicago, can take up to 12 credits at Beijing University. The University of Chicago has a campus in Singapore. The Stern School of Business at New York University lets you spend a couple of weeks in Chile or Denmark. Now, to intensify their international perspective, an increasing number of students are leaving the country altogether to get their MBAs ? in Canada, Britain and elsewhere in Europe. ?In today?s global business world, the most sought-after employees know how to work cross-culturally, how to motivate international teams and how to deal with the uncertainty that the global economy throws up,? says Julia Tyler, associate dean of the MBA programme at the London Business School.