Thinking of going abroad? The four main countries for furthering your study - The United States

Many students and employers highly prize an education from the United States, a fact that was emphasised in a South China Morning Post/TNS Opinion Leaders Survey earlier this month which confirmed the widely-held belief. Sixty per cent of opinion leaders surveyed believed North American graduates were superior to their Hong Kong counterparts. Creativity, leadership skills and analytical thinking were identified as the particular strengths.

It is no wonder that the US is a popular study destination. Across the country more than 1,700 universities and other institutions offer graduate programmes and each varies in terms of traditions, missions and the types of students they attract.

The more famous universities, such as Harvard or Yale, are highly selective, competitive and have achieved their renown chiefly for the high quality of their research and graduate programmes.

Although the university is important as it is largely responsible for setting the intellectual atmosphere, providing resources such as libraries and other facilities, studies will take place predominantly in a single department or programme, so the reputation of the programme should take priority over that of the university.

Students need to identify institutions that offer their subject area or specialisations they wish to pursue within that area of interest.

For example, if a student is interested in engineering and wants to specialise in biomedical or bioengineering, MIT may be one of the top engineering schools but Johns Hopkins University actually offers one of the best biomedical graduate programmes in the US. Students would then have to decide which would suit them better.