This study explores the criteria that are important for graduate students in selecting a university in Germany; how these criteria match up with students' views of the institution they ultimately attended; and how graduate students gained information about the colleges/universities they considered. This study reveals that public university graduate students in Germany consider a wide variety of criteria when deciding on which colleges/universities to apply; and that their actual behavior in terms of enrollment may not directly reflect the importance they state they give to certain selection criteria. A bibliography is included.