Graduate School Selection

I have was considering attending grad school to dig deeper into my interests in machine learning and data science. To explore my options, I have created a dashboard that utilizes data aggregated by the Carnegie Foundation for their Carnegie Classifications. I gave myself plenty of options to adjust, but I ultimately settled on only being selective of the states I'd like to move to and the institutions' specializations. You can see a screenshot of my dashboard below.

After I tuned the dashboard to select the institutions I was more likely to be interested in, I exported the list to a spreadsheet. I then took a deeper look into the list and picked out the ones I would be less interested in. For example, I have no desire to study for the GRE, as I would much rather spend my time focusing on topics that I am specifically interested in. 

Eventually, I pruned my list down and gave each institution an interest level rating. This rating took into account a combination of factors, like labs I'd like to be a part of and coursework I'd be interested in taking. The interest levels are totally subjective to me, and I will not be sharing them. However, I'm happy to show what that refinement process looks like. You can see the breakdown in the Sankey diagram below.