What would you do
Say you have decided you're going to stop working full-time because you're in a dead end job and you don't have the skillsets you need to change your occupation/work environment.
You have two choices:
Go to the graduate school that would give you full tuition remission and thus save you assloads of money but you honestly don't think its programs interest you or would offer you very much for your future
or
Find some other program and you're pretty sure you wouldn't be able to receive any kind of remission or scholarship to attend but at least might have more interesting/better classes/programs for you to attend
As a corollary, how exactly does one "research" schools? I've been trying to figure this out since high school. Everybody's always like "oh school XX is good but I hear their program YY isn't even the top 2356 of the nation" and I'm like wtf... okay first of all... where did you hear that? Second of all, do you really trust that statistic that some Joe Schmoe pulled out of his ass? I mean have you even gone to the campus? Have you spoken to the faculty? Do you really believe that program YY is full of shit? How can you compare similar programs at different schools unless you pretty much go and audit them in person... interview their staff and faculty... print out sheets of syllabi and course plans and... do something... I dunno, are there resources that specialize in this besides some lame newspaper's website that just goes about listing the top 100 schools in X diploma or whatever?