GMAC Teams Up With Vantage Learning to Provide New Writing Software for Prospective MBAs

The Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®) is now offering software from Vantage Learning designed to help prospective and current MBA students strengthen their writing skills.

Newtown, Pennsylvania (October 6, 2008)—The Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®) is now offering software from Vantage Learning designed to help prospective and current MBA students strengthen their writing skills. The program, called MY Access!® Professional Edition, is available through mba.com, a Web site for prospective business school students hosted by GMAC.

“We’re proud to enhance our partnership with GMAC,” said Paul Edelblut, vice president of Vantage Learning. “Vantage is pleased to offer a product that will improve the writing and business communication skills that are vitally important in succeeding in business. MY Access! Professional Edition is a natural extension of our association with GMAC, and we look forward to the success of MBA candidates who use our product worldwide.”

GMAC currently uses Vantage’s IntelliMetric artificial intelligence software to grade essays written as part of the Analytical Writing Assessment, a component of the Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®). The GMAT exam is owned by GMAC.

MY Access! Professional Edition, created and owned by Vantage, is expressly designed to help people hone their ability to write purposefully, powerfully and persuasively, Edelblut noted. The program is endorsed by GMAC and built on the same technology behind Vantage’s writing software for students in college and elementary, middle and high school. The software offers the following features:

  • A complete business-writing course divided into multiple modules, each designed to improve a specific type of business writing skill. These categories include e-mails, memos, letters, proposals and reports.
     
  • A complete essential writing course designed to improve persuasive, narrative and expository writing.
  • Immediate scoring and individualized feedback.
     
  • Detailed, prescriptive revision plans that target the key traits of writing: focus, content development, organization, language use and grammar.
     
  • A writing portfolio enabling users to monitor their progress.
     
  • A word processor with editing and writing tools including a thesaurus, grammar checker, spelling checker and word bank.

“Our continuing relationship with Vantage Learning reflects our commitment to making high quality tools available to business schools and people interested in business careers,” said Peg Jöbst, senior vice president of the GMAT Program at the Graduate Management Admission Council. “We are pleased to add Vantage Learning’s writing software to our list of products to help people reach their professional goals.”

MY Access! Professional Edition is part of a series of tools GMAC makes available through mba.com to people preparing for graduate management education. Other products available from the Council include products and software featuring retired GMAT questions and free software that simulates the GMAT testing experience.

A one-year subscription to MY Access! Professional Edition costs $129.95. More information about the software is at www.mba.com/store and at the Vantage Online Store, www.vantageonlinestore.com.

ABOUT GMAC

The Graduate Management Admission Council (www.gmac.com), based in McLean, Virginia, is a nonprofit education organization of leading graduate business schools worldwide dedicated to creating access to and disseminating information about graduate management education. The Council owns the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), used by approximately 4,500 graduate management programs at more than 1,900 business schools around the world to assess applicants. The GMAT exam was created in 1954 and remains the first and only standardized test specifically designed for graduate business and management programs. More information about the GMAT exam is at www.mba.com.

ABOUT VANTAGE LEARNING

A pioneer in providing a Software as a Service (SaaS) model to deliver solutions to educators, Vantage Learning is recognized as the leader in cost-effective, high volume, secure, scalable online assessment and instructional programs for students. Leveraging technology such as artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, and Web-based learning objects, Vantage provides educators with high-quality tools and resources that motivate students to learn and that create meaningful interaction between students, parents and teachers. Vantage is based in Newtown, Pennsylvania.