If you are planning to apply for admission to an MBA program, there are many criteria you must evaluate before you can decide on the school to attend. Among these is the accreditation of the program. With more than 5,000 MBA programs from which to choose, evaluating their accreditation status may help to eliminate a large number. National accreditation includes about 1,200 institutions. About 620 of them are accredited by the AACSB, considered the benchmark of quality. About 530 are accredited by the ACBSP, and fewer than 200 by IACBE, the third of the national or international accrediting agencies.

Every MBA aspirant is not able to consider a wide choice of programs. Some are tied to a small geographic region by a job, family obligations, or other constraints that require limiting the field to a small number of local programs. It is therefore worthwhile to understand the significance of regional accreditation.

» Read more: Regional Accreditation of Colleges and Universities Offering the MBA Degree