How do I get there?

So I know where I need to end up. In a (preferably good) grad school program for OD. I'm just having a bit of trouble figuring out how to get there. I have a very good resource list of all OD grad programs in the country, but I can't really figure out where to go from there? How do I pick? Which ones do I choose? There's no http://www.pickagoodgradschool.com/ to help unfortunately. There seem to be a lot of choices, and I don't want to go stumbling into a bad program just because its close by. SJSU and USF have OD programs, and USF seems less rigorous than SJSU, but SJSU seems to be more of a broad program that can be specialized in. Do I limit myself to local schools? I've never done this whole grad school thing before, so I'm pretty lost as to how to go about applying for it.