Looking for the right Yeshiva is like looking for a shidduch. And like all shidduchim, it's hard to give guidelines without knowing the parties involved. Nevertheless, we can say a few general points that will hold true, because even in shidduchim there are certain things that are true for everyone.  

Someone looking for a yeshiva generally has only a certain amount of time to immerse themselves in limmud haTorah and in the yeshiva environment. So primarily what they should be thinking about is, that at the end of this week or month or year or two years or however long it is that I’m going to spend in Yeshiva, I want to leave different than I came in. I wouldn't want to go there and have an experience and then have it be back to business as usual. I’d want it to be that I'm a different person at the end of this process than I was when I started. When I walk out of the yeshiva it will be with different glasses on, I'm different. I have grown. I see the world differently and my relationship with the Torah is different. And my relationship with Hashem is different.  

Individually each person has something that they're looking for. Yeshiva is a tool to help people grow and to help people change. And like all tools, it depends what job it is that you're trying to do. I would advise that you look at the students that are currently in the yeshiva, and you have to ask them “how have you changed and grown since you came?” “If you're comparing yourself now to where you were when you came a year ago, are things different and what is different?” That will give you a pretty good picture of - is this a place that's really going to change things for me?  

But that's not sufficient in and of itself, in my opinion. I have been in several different yeshivas since I came to Israel at the age of 17 – some American, some Israeli, some more yeshivish, some less so, and I was in one particular yeshiva that is a very good yeshiva, and the Rosh Yeshivas were Gedolei Yisrael. But for me it went terribly, and I was miserable. Here was this fantastic yeshiva, that people are growing and developing with world class Torah. People would come from neighboring towns to hear the Roshei Yeshiva give shiur and I was not evolving or changing in any positive way.  

And B’H I had a relationship with Rabbi Schwab, who is the nephew of the famous mashgiach Rav Schwab. And he told me you're missing something here. He said you are not happy in this place and there's only so long you're going to be able do something that you're not happy with. There's only so long you can stay in a place where you're not happy. You need to look around at your peer group, look around at your friends and the guys that you know at yeshivas all over the country, and ask yourself not just who's growing, not just where is the place with the most dynamic shiurim, or the biggest Rosh Yeshiva - but where are they happy? where are they growing and learning and enjoying and where are they learning besimcha? And I looked around at that time and I found that all of the guys who I knew were happy, and they were all in one place. And I immediately moved to that yeshiva, and I was there B’H for many years, and it very much produced who I am now.  

The lesson that I got is that of course we all want to grow, and of course we want to change, and of course we all want to develop, and we want to develop everywhere, and that's true and you need to find the yeshiva that's going to help you do that, find a yeshiva that has some kind of track record that they do that for people. And you also need to speak to the boys and get a feeling for the atmosphere of the place. Is this a place where there's joy? Are people enjoying? Are people happy to be where they are? Are they growing in a way that gives them satisfaction?