Growing the GME Pipeline with Undergrad Outreach
By Christa Johnson
It’s been a great semester for the On Campus Presence (OCP) program with new digital tests and experiments to reach undergrads through influencer channels. Undergrads report that professors, advisors, and parents continue to be the top influencers around graduate business school and, according to this semester’s OCP registration survey, more students are flocking to GMAC’s undergrad website and finding it a valuable resource when considering business school. This semester, we tested a few campaigns that spoke to undergrads in a language they could understand: social.
We hosted:
- Our first-ever College Bowl Pop Culture Game, designed to engage undergrads around popular culture, business school, and the GMAT exam. With more than 300 participants and overwhelmingly positive feedback, GMAC will offer this again in the Fall so stay tuned.
- #GMATadulting, a weekly sweepstakes for students who had registered for the GMAT exam (or planned to) and wanted to share their “adulting” moment with their followers. This had mixed reviews due to privacy settings needed to track the entries after the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal had entered the news just the week before. With this reservation around privacy, we’ll modify and test a similar campaign in the Fall.
In our efforts to connect graduate business school with strong influencers, we partnered with
Grown & Flown, a thriving community for parents that discusses all aspects of parenting teens, college kids, and young adults. With a following of 325K+ and an 80% engagement average across their channels, we crafted a piece on
12 Things Juniors and Seniors Should Do Before College Graduation, which received one of the highest engagement rates from the year and enabled members to easily tag or share with their children or parenting peers.
Our other accomplishment this semester was creating an advisor toolkit where undergrad advisors can get more information on the value of graduate business school and resources they can share with their students. Feel free to share this link with undergrad or career advisors on your campus to continue to grow the pipeline for graduate management education.
We’ll see you at Annual Conference in June! I’ll have a booth in the GMAC Lounge so feel free to stop by for a chat about undergrads and growing the pipeline of graduate management education (and the chance to win an Amazon Tap). Looking forward to seeing you all there!