Diving into the complexities of the business education landscape, this episode of the Poets & Quants’ “Business Casual” podcast explores GMAC’s latest innovation, Advancery. Featuring a conversation with John Byrne, Maria Wich-Vila, Caroline Diarte Edwards, and GMAC’s Chief Product Officer, Adam Witwer, the discussion centers around this new digital admissions tool designed to guide prospective students through the increasingly intricate world of graduate management education.

Adam explains how the marketplace’s fragmentation drove the development of Advancery. With business schools offering a plethora of programs—sometimes up to 20 different ones at a single institution—students often struggle to discover and understand all their options. Advancery aims to simplify this process by serving as a one-stop shop for candidates to research and plan their educational journeys. By gathering comprehensive data on the variety of programs available, the tool helps users make informed decisions based on their specific career goals.

Key insights also highlight the evolving hiring landscape, where an emphasis on skills is becoming increasingly important alongside traditional credentials. Advancery addresses this by reflecting both the breadth of program offerings and the emerging trends in demand, such as data analytics and artificial intelligence. This episode provides invaluable perspective for MBA applicants and stakeholders in business education, shedding light on how tools like Advancery can enhance their decision-making process in a complex educational landscape.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wickvilla and Caroline Diorkey Edwards. Today, we have a special guest from the Graduate Management Admission Council. He’s a Chief Product Officer, Adam Whitmer. And if you’ve been following the news on Poets and Quants, you will know that GMAC has released something new and very different. It’s a digital admissions tool for prospective business students that essentially guides candidates through their business education journey. We wanted to talk to Adam about the product. He was instrumental in developing it. It’s a totally new thing for GMAC, which, as you know, is the administrator of the GMAT test and also an advocate for graduate management education, of course. Adam, welcome.

[00:01:07] – Adam

Hi, John. Thank you. So glad to be here. I’m excited to talk about Advisory today. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:13] – John

Cool. Tell me, give me a little background on the context of why GMAC felt this is a good idea and now was the right time.

[00:01:23] – Adam

Yeah, absolutely. There were a couple of things. I think it was really a response to a couple of trends that we were seeing in the marketplace. Space that really drove us to work on this product. One was fragmentation across the GME space. I had this moment early on as we were ideating around what advance rate could be. I was trying to But I understand what was happening. I always mentioned this aha moment I had on Cornell University’s website. I went to their business education website. I was like, Wow, it’s not just one program, it’s about 20 programs. That’s not even talking about the PhD programs, et cetera. And then I started talking to schools as well, because we’re lucky enough that I can take advantage of the relationships we have with schools. And they say, they would tell me, the admissions officers at those schools would say, yeah, we’ve got 14 programs going and we’ve got another two coming up in the next two years. And that was one. And the question I had is, do candidates even know about these programs? Do candidates know how to discover these programs? If the wide variety of them, they’re available to them, it just seemed like actually a really exciting opportunity.

[00:02:36] – Adam

I think the schools were being very responsive to what they were seeing in the marketplace. The candidates, AI has been a huge trend, so there’s new programs through. Strictly related to AI. Before that, there were other trends. The schools are being responsive, but the candidates really seen that. The other thing was what we were seeing in the hiring market, which was a greater emphasis on skills. Maybe alongside of credentials, skills were coming up as something that was being very highly considered. We started thinking about, how are we thinking about this fragmented marketplace of GME and what skills are being taught and how candidates can make the most of that in order to work on the right program for what they’re trying to do for their next career goal. And so that was really the genesis of it, and it just took off from there.

[00:03:29] – John

Yeah, I mean, it’s true. The market has become much more complicated in many ways because there are so many offerings. And probably in the last decade, the big growth area was specialized master’s degrees in areas like data analytics and now artificial intelligence, sustainability, supply chain management, etc.

[00:03:47] – Adam

Yeah, exactly.

[00:03:49] – John

There’s so much more to think about. I think many of these degrees actually are not well understood even by the employer market because they’re so and different. So going about creating this product, your goal was primarily to help educate prospective students in the different options that there might be. And what else?

[00:04:18] – Adam

Yeah, and then I give them the information that they need to make a decision. I mean, the product is really geared around trying to be a one-stop shop for researching, planning to business education. And And so a lot of that is we’re trying to do the work for the candidate. There is no comprehensive place to look across all of the GME options, right? And so we set about the work of actually collecting and aggregating that data and then reflecting that back to the user. That was actually, I underestimated the complexity of that job. That turned out to be a very big job. I figured, we’ll figure it out. We’ll use a mix of machines and humans, and we’ll come with the comprehensive data set. But it’s been challenging. We’ve made a lot of progress, and we’re going to continue. Right now, we started with the GMAC member schools in the United States and Western Europe. But our aspirations are much bigger than that. We want to have a really global database of GME. So that was it. And then the other thing we were also looking to augment, talking to schools and talking to candidates.

[00:05:24] – Adam

It’s like, what other information can we get this? Not just the basics, not just the geographic location and then how much it costs and the duration, et cetera. What else can we get? And so we started to really hone in on user sentiment across the web, and we looked at a number of different sites. We really ended up spending a lot of time looking at Reddit and how candidates, alumni, and existing students, how they would talk amongst themselves about the different programs in schools. And we started to think about, Okay, how can we surface to the user. In other words, when a candidate is considering their next career step, we can surface that for them. We can bring that forward. We tried to do that in a way that is really focused on positive differentiators for the schools. This school really excels at this thing. If this is important to you as you’re telling us about yourself within the application, we can match you to that. To be honest with you, John, right now, it’s a data play, a convenience of data play. Then from there, we’re going to build out a set of services around the entire journey that you described at the opening of the call.

[00:06:38] – John

You’re using artificial intelligence as well, right?

[00:06:42] – Adam

Yeah. We use it really heavy on the back end. It’s a mix. We were careful to put a human in the loop in all the processes that I’m described. For the school data, it was a combination of web scraping and then summarization via LLMs, and then human challenge checking to make sure that everything was right. That’s an ongoing automation process to speed it up. As I said, it was challenging. The Reddit data, we use something called, which maybe you’ve heard of, is like a multi-agentic workflow, where the basic idea is you take Instead of using just one AI model, you look at the different models and you determine what they’re good at, and you use them to verify the output of the other. I’m oversimplifying. I’m not that technical, but that’s roughly the approach that we took. Then you put a human on the output that, you evaluate, does this feel right? Does this look right? And then how can you speed this up and scale it? So, yeah, we use quite a lot. It was pretty sophisticated, but I really am thrilled with the progress that we made and a lot more to go, too.

[00:07:46] – John

Yeah. Well, it sounds like this is the foundation of the product, but that the product will evolve over time. What are other things that you want to see happen with the product?

[00:07:58] – Adam

Yeah, I When I think about some of our competition in the product, one of the things that really came through in interviewing customers, prospective customers, was the spreadsheet, which sounds maybe a little obvious or silly, but every candidate you talk to that is preparing for a business education, they’re tracking everything in this massive spreadsheet, of things that are helpful to them. And So one of the things we have, we have an application section of the app, of Advisory. And within the application section, we’ve tried to take a lot of that guesswork out of it for you. And so that’s one thing where we think we can really help. So everyone’s not having to figure out not just which school to go to, what are the steps to apply, et cetera, and then having to track that in a calendar view. So that’s one area. I think there’s a great opportunity to expand that out and automate the application process itself. I dream of a common app for business education maybe in the future. That’s one area. And then we’re looking at a lot of different partnerships around career and business-related services that we at GMAC don’t provide, but we can maybe tap into our partnership network.

[00:09:24] – Adam

One of the things that really comes through in talking to candidates also is the need for a human connection is a huge one that you’ll hear. So on the one hand, I am excited about the data we have. I recognize for a lot of people, they just want to talk to somebody. And so that’s a service that I’m very actively pursuing. How can we layer in human connections with either the schools or with maybe a coaching network that specializes in this area? Those are some of the things that we’re working on now.

[00:09:55] – John

Yeah, very cool. Caroline, what do you make of all this?

[00:09:59] – Speaker

Yeah, I’m I’m curious what your business model is, Adam. So do you… Do the candidates pay? Do the schools pay? How are you going to monetize this?

[00:10:08] – John

That’s a great MBA question.

[00:10:10] – Adam

What’s the business model? Yeah, it sure is. The most important question, the question my boss asked me. So, yeah, we are right now. So we did go to market with a price point and at $1. 49 for six months of access. To be honest with you, Carole, we’re going to be experimenting with the right price for the value that we provide. I think that we went in with the opening evaluation price when we first launched the products. So right now, you can get it at a discount of what our initial price was. But I think we’ll continue to look at that. But the basic business model, unless something changes, is basically direct to consumer. So we’ll be charging candidates, and hopefully, they’ll see the value that they’ll be happy happy to pay us for access to the product. Longer term, could there be an opportunity to work with schools and turn it into more of a B2B business model? Maybe. It’s not really something that we’re thinking about right now, though.

[00:11:16] – John

Now, do you see this as competition to Caroline and Maria?

[00:11:19] – Adam

How so?

[00:11:21] – John

Well, I mean, they’re in the business of holding the hands of applicants through the admissions process and offering them advice in terms of enhance the odds of acceptance, particularly to highly selected programs where the vast majority of candidates are rejected.

[00:11:39] – Adam

Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I guess I think of it as not necessarily focused on highly selective programs per se. I mean, that’s a part of it. But it’s not… I think my understanding of Carole and Maria, right, it’s mostly MBA programs at top-rank schools. And there’s just so much more to graduate management education now. I think that there’s just plenty of space for multiple people helping candidates find the connection that works best for them.

[00:12:10] – John

Yeah. Caroline, you’d probably agree with that, right?

[00:12:13] – Speaker

Yes. And I was also wondering if you’re looking at programs beyond degree programs. So there’s a lot of education courses that business schools offer. It’s more and more talk about stackable credentials and so on. Is that something you plan to address as well?

[00:12:30] – Adam

For sure. I see a huge opportunity there. Right now, we’re actually focused on certificates because there’s just a lot of those, and the duration of those are all over the place. That can be a three-month program, one-year program, everything in between. So that is something that we’re focused on now. Dual degrees is something we’re focused on as well. So MBA as masters is where we started because that’s what we know, to be honest with you. So it was easy as for to verify that data and get it through the pipeline. But we are focused on those other types of degrees now. Ultimately, I would love, as we build out the product and build out the data set, I would love to have, I mentioned that Cornell University of like, Okay, we have 20 different programs available to you. I want them all in there, right? And I want the user to understand what those are. And then I want to aggregate that across the entire GMA space of everything that’s available. That’s the aspiration.

[00:13:31] – John

Maria, what do you think?

[00:13:34] – Speaker

I had a client of mine take a look at the product because the press release had some information, but not a ton of it. It seems like right now the real focus is on just aggregating a lot of data on a number of programs, pretty much any program in the graduate business space. It looks like you have aspirations to really cover a lot, as you just alluded to, to cover a lot of career paths. My client is interested in getting an MBA in health care, and so she started entering in health care. The career paths that popped up, some of them were businessy related, but some of them were clinical psychologist or home health aid. I don’t even know if you need any graduate degree to become a home health aide, but maybe you do. Maybe that’s part of what your product is aspiring to, so that if someone wants to become a clinical social worker or something else, that that’s what you’re looking, you will then be providing them with that mountain of information and sifting through to helping them find the right programs. I think it’s valuable because there are so many programs that are launching every day.

[00:14:43] – Speaker

We cover a ton of them here on the podcast. The microcredentials, as Caroline referenced, the master’s in management that are being launched and all those other good things. I think it’s great to have a place where all of that information is compiled, at least as a starting point for people who are just beginning on the journey and might not have any idea as to what’s available for them.

[00:15:04] – Adam

Yeah. Thanks, Maria. I think that also that gives us the ability to serve people as they get along their career journey. What I really would hope that this product would become is like, Okay, I’m at a point where I’m two, three years into my career. I maybe know what discipline, but I’m not really sure what’s next or how to get there. Then there’s another inflection point a year from now or a couple of years from now, Okay, now I’m trying to think of the next thing. The need that you’ll have in any of those is going to vary greatly. I think what you were just describing, Maria, is how I’m thinking of how I can connect those candidates to their career needs, not just their immediate business education needs. I’m thinking a little bit longer term, but that’s ultimately what we’d like to serve.

[00:15:55] – John

Yeah, and you’re right. I mean, there are so many programs at so many schools all over the world that it’s really hard to get your arms around what’s available. And then what’s interesting to me is your decision to scrape some of the opinions from Reddit I like Reddit because you do get a lot of nitty-gritty stuff there. It might inform some of my thinking and some of my reporting, but you also get crazies on Reddit, Adam.

[00:16:28] – Adam

Yeah, right.

[00:16:30] – John

A fair number of crazies who dispense a lot of misinformation, almost into what comes out of Washington these days. So I appreciate the fact that you filter for the more positive comments, for sure.

[00:16:51] – Adam

Yeah, it is positive, but it’s also patterns, right? So we’re not going to basically say this one user said this one thing, this one time, right? It’s definitely more we’re looking for a certain level of statistical significance before we say, Okay, this is worthy of consideration. And then it is against positive differentiators around themes that they themselves talk. So we identified the themes that they most care about, which I actually really loved. So it’s professional development, and there are sub-thèmes under these, but professional development, student life and well-being, institutional support and resources, and community inclusivity. That’s not from us. That’s not from the schools. That’s bottoms up. That’s what they themselves are talking about. And then around those themes, how do the schools stand up and how they address those things? We have to be careful, though. I hear you. I mean, if I were a school listening to this, I might be like, How are you making sure? How are you verifying? I get that. And we took a pretty cautious approach. We focused on the positive. We threw a lot of the negative, and we looked for statistical significance and put humans in the loop to make sure that it was accurate as possible.

[00:18:07] – John

Ai is pretty good, I have to say about summarizing a bunch of comments. There are now websites, including, I think, the Washington Post and perhaps the New York Times, that have AI summaries of the comments on their stories. This is something that’s becoming more and more common among content providers. I think that’s a smart addition, frankly. Thank you. What was your biggest challenge in developing the product?

[00:18:37] – Adam

Well, first of all, it’s just capability T-MAC. I mean, that company has not built a digital product like this at all. So we didn’t have the knowledge of the team. I mean, I have. I’ve worked on these sorts of things personally, but the team didn’t have a ton of experience around that. We weren’t really built for that, frankly. We are an assessments company, first and foremost. So that was it. How are we going to find the right people to build this out? So I was able to tap into my network and do that. So we got over that. And then just managing and wrangling the data, as I alluded to earlier, it turned out to be much more challenging than I anticipated. Those were the two biggest things. Overall, though, when we launched the commercial version of the product back in late March, I was I was thinking to myself on my way to work that day, I had nothing a year ago. I didn’t have the team. Now I have an app. No, it’s not perfect. There’s all these things that we could do to make it better. But at the end of the day, we really turned it around in a year.

[00:19:46] – Adam

I’m excited about how quickly we were able to.

[00:19:50] – John

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because your ambition for the product is pretty grand, I have to say. I mean, really is.

[00:19:57] – Adam

It is. Thank you.

[00:19:59] – John

It’s pretty the additions to come. Caroline, any last words on this?

[00:20:03] – Speaker

Yeah, I’m curious, Adam, what success looks like for you in two or three years. What would be your dream scenario?

[00:20:11] – Adam

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, my dream scenario is this becomes a new source of revenue for GMAC. Gmac is we’re a nonprofit, but we’re self-funded, right? And the GMAT, the market is what it is. We all know what that is. It’s leveled off, right? And so how can GMAC remain relevant and continue to fund its activities? And so I really hope that this establishes a new GMAC ecosystem where we can build out new relationships with customers and new lines of revenue. I mean, that’s really what we’re ultimately trying to do, Carlin.

[00:20:49] – John

Yeah, that’s how I see the launch in that bigger context because of the decline in standardized testing. Although, I do think, this is my personal view, I’m free consulting here, Adam, okay? Okay. Marie is usually the one who gives free consulting on these podcasts. My consulting would be to try to brand and sell the GMAT test as prep for business school. Because one thing you hear from people who take it and people who encourage others to take it is that studying for the test is the best way to prepare for a rigorous graduate management Really, GMAC has never really taken that slant on a marketing angle. Maybe even devising a slightly easier or quicker test in marketing that way. Obviously, GMAT came out with a shorter version of the Focus Edition. Maybe that’s good enough. Maybe it’s just really smart marketing around, here’s the ideal way to prepare for successful business education and to have a jumpstart on it. That approach has never been taken. I think it’s just another very sellable option to make more people take the GMAT test. Anyway, that’s my free advice.

[00:22:12] – Adam

Maria. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, John. No, to be honest with you, I’ve not heard that exact angle before. That’s very interesting, and I like it a lot. So thanks so much.

[00:22:23] – John

Now, Maria is our free consultant always.

[00:22:28] – Speaker

Yeah. Adam, as myself, a former product manager now turned admissions digital. I’m now a digital admissions tool entrepreneur with my own admissions tool. I think one piece of advice I would give you is to maybe at the beginning, narrow your scope and your focus. That way, when we think about who takes the GMAT, who are the people who are even coming to the GMAT website or the business because website or the mba. Com website ecosystem? Probably people who are interested in the business and advanced or master’s degrees in something related to business. I would start with that narrowish focus, not only because I think it makes the most sense for your users, but also that way you’re not going to run yourselves ragged collecting a ton of data points on what do I need to do to become a home health aide That’s great information to have, absolutely. But I don’t know that someone would organically make their way to advanced free if that’s their interest, because they would presumably come through one of the other touch points within the GMAC ecosystem. Obviously, Honestly, just from a spirally, there’s only 24 hours in the day.

[00:23:34] – Speaker

You’re going to drive yourself. It’s really little by little. Start off with a narrower scope and then expand it. It’s an easier way to make things digestible and get feedback along the way.

[00:23:48] – Adam

Thank you, Maria. We think alike. Adam, I know that naming a new product, a company, anything is always difficult, but how did you come up with Advisory?

[00:24:00] – John

I bet you there’s a lot of debate internally about that because it doesn’t immediately translate to the product. Again, Poets and Quants doesn’t immediately translate to the general public as a provider for business education. But But Advancery, how did you come up with that?

[00:24:18] – Adam

We had a workshop where we had a bunch of words that related to advancing your career. And they were just words. And I started combining a bunch of them. I don’t remember what the exact two words I I was combining. But at the end of the workshop, everybody was looking at it and everyone just zeroed in on that one. It seemed like that was the one. And then we tested it with some customers and they seemed to respond. At the end of the day, it’s just a word I made up. Yeah, I would do. Well, that’s how that happens.

[00:24:51] – John

I mean, that’s how it all happens. I’ve been in those brainstorm sessions, playing the name stocks.

[00:24:59] – Adam

Yeah, it’s so hard.

[00:25:01] – John

It’s not easy. It’s so hard. Adam, good luck with it.

[00:25:08] – Adam

Thank you, John.

[00:25:09] – John

I think it’s cool that you’re thinking up new and different things that will help prospective students make the right choices for them. Again, the name of the product is Advisory. Go to the GMAC website, check it out. Do you still have a complimentary seven-day trial or not?

[00:25:29] – Adam

We do, yes, absolutely. Here you go. Please give it a try.

[00:25:32] – John

You can actually try it out for free. There is an introductory price as well that you could take advantage of. Adam, thank you for bringing this to life.

[00:25:43] – Adam

Thank you, John. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you, Carole, and thank you, Maria.

[00:25:47] – John

For all of you out there, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets of Quants.