Privacy Statement

This page pertains to the personal data we collect from and about students, prospective students, alumni, and other users of our student-facing websites. For information about the personal data we collect about school professionals, vendors, and sponsors, please Click Here

On this page, we explain:

• Who we are Click
• How we collect, use and share your data Click
• Your rights and how to exercise them Click

Who we are

BusinessBecause, Ltd. is owned by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). The GMAC family consists of several legal entities to provide you with global access to meaningful information and opportunities. To see a current list of the GMAC entities Click Here. When we use “GMAC” or “we” (or some derivative) in this Privacy Statement, we are referring collectively to the GMAC legal entities, including BusinessBecause, Ltd., unless we make a clear distinction.

How we collect, use, and share your data

We collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal information through automated and other means as necessary to perform our contracts with you. We also give you the opportunity to increase your knowledge of graduate management opportunities, when you consent to us sharing your information with schools and other organizations, enabling them to learn about your aspirations and contact you about their programs, career opportunities, and other information related to graduate management education. With your consent (if required), we may use your data to contact you via email, text, and other channels to inform you about products and services that we think would interest you.

We may also collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal information if doing so is reasonably necessary for a legitimate business interest, but only if we have carefully considered and determined that the use of your data has a minimal privacy impact on you, relative to the benefit gained. We also consider whether we are processing your data in a way that you would reasonably expect, whether because we have informed you of that use, or a similar use, or because it is a typical way to use data. Sometimes using and sharing your data benefits schools and the field of graduate management education by providing insights about prospective students. Other legitimate uses serve GMAC, such as when we use video monitoring at our test centers to protect the integrity of our tests.

When we indicate that we may share your data, we may share it with organizations that may be outside of the country where you are located. These countries may have different privacy protections than the country where you are located. When transferring your data, we use internationally recognized safeguards. See the table below for the safeguards we typically employ for common types of recipients.

To better understand how we collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal data, including for our legitimate interests, continue reading our Privacy Statement below.

Account creation

We collect most information about you directly from you. To create an account on one of our websites (mba.com, gmac.com, nmat.org, businessbecause.com, thembatour.com), we need your name, email address, and password so you can create and access your account. To provide you with access to certain products and services, you may be required to include additional information in your account profile.

Candidate profile

When you visit one of our websites we may ask you to provide contact details, background information, and other information, so we can use that information and combine it with additional information to create your Candidate Profile. Your Candidate Profile may also include information not directly provided by you, such as inferences based on the school pages you visit on our websites and your geolocation. We use your Candidate Profile and other personal data for legitimate purposes, including research and development, communications, advertising, security, and corporate and legal matters, as well as sharing that data with the GMAC family companies and others for the same purposes.

To achieve our mission of providing the solutions necessary for schools and candidates to discover and evaluate each other, we may use data from your Candidate Profile to assist us in creating predictive models and tools. We may also apply predictive models and tools to your Candidate Profile and other personal data to advance this mission. For example, we may analyze data concerning your field of interest, selected schools, and preferred location of study to identify schools that might be a good fit for you and to enhance your opportunities to connect with them at one of our tour events.

Sharing data within the GMAC family companies

GMAC believes that talent and opportunities should have no boundaries. Our mission is to provide the solutions necessary for schools and candidates to discover and evaluate each other from anywhere in the world. To facilitate these global connections, GMAC operates through several legal entities across the globe.

Graduate Management
Global Connection (UK)
Limited

Graduate Management
Admission Council (Hong Kong)
Limited

Graduate Management
Admission Council (India)
Private Limited

Graduate Management
Global Connection (India)
Private Limited

Through these entities, we continue to invest in relevant solutions that give you access to meaningful information and opportunities. For this purpose, we have a legitimate interest in sharing your personal information among the GMAC entities. Each GMAC entity has agreed to comply with internationally recognized data protection standards. This should give you assurance that we will respect your rights and take appropriate measures to protect your information. To obtain a copy of those measures, contact privacy@gmac.com.

Products & services

We offer a variety of products and services to individuals considering business school. Generally, we use the following data to perform our contract with you:

Depending on the product or service you purchase or use, our contract with you might require us to share your personal data with third parties. For example, if you are taking one of our tests, we will provide your test scores and score report data to the schools and other organizations you have selected to receive your test score reports. We may also share your data with our vendors to administer the products and services to you.

Because we continually strive to improve our products and services, we have a legitimate interest in seeking your feedback. We may send you a survey about a product or service you used. You may unsubscribe from these requests, but we hope you will take the time to let us know how we are doing.

We may use your purchase information, performance information, and product usage data, in combination with other information, for the legitimate purposes of improving our products and services, including understanding user needs and interests to better tailor our product and services to meet our customers’ needs. We also use this data for other legitimate purposes, including research and development, communications, advertising, security, and corporate and legal matters, as well as sharing that data with the GMAC family companies and others for the same purposes.

To learn more about how we collect, use and share your data for specific products and services, keep reading.

Events

GMAC hosts many events throughout the year, including online and in-person fairs and bootcamps. When you register for a GMAC-hosted event, download an event mobile application, or participate in other event-related activities, we may collect information from you to provide you with information and services associated with the event. With your consent (if required), we may use your data to contact you via email, text, and other channels to remind you about the events you have registered to attend.

We may use a third-party platform for event registrations, in which case, the platform provider’s privacy notice will apply. The platform provider will collect your name, email address and certain other information, which they will share with us and any third-party co-hosting the event. They will not share your payment information with us. This Privacy Statement applies to our use of your data; if we have a co-host, our co-host’s privacy notice will apply to their use of your data. We may track your registration and attendance at the events and sessions, as captured by event tracking technology, such as RFID technology and WhatsApp links. Your Candidate Profile may be updated to reflect the event-related data we collect. To learn more about how we use your Candidate Profile, Click Here . We use your data to advance our legitimate interests of improving our events and other products and services, research and development, communications, advertising, security, and corporate and legal matters, as well as sharing that data with the GMAC family companies and others for the same purposes.

Many of our events serve an important networking function, where you can meet with schools, other individuals considering graduate management education, and business club representatives. We use and share your registration and event-related data to facilitate these connections for you. Our events may also assist you in your journey by giving you the opportunity to learn about products and services offered by test prep providers, admissions consultants, event exhibitors and sponsors, and others. We may share your personal data with these individuals and organizations, and permit them to use this data to further these legitimate interests. With your consent (if required), we may permit recipients to use this information to contact you by email or text. We may also permit them send you material by postal mail. Click Here to learn more about unsubscribing from marketing messages.

You may have the option to download our events app to help you navigate the event and plan your schedule. If you choose to use an event app, we may use the contact information you provided in the event registration or in your account profile to pre-populate your event app profile. You can create a profile and edit your information in the event app. Within the app we provide the ability to share, at your direction, your personal information with some social networks, schools, exhibitors, sponsors, and other attendees. At the event, GMAC may simplify your sharing of your personal information using scanning codes. By allowing an exhibitor to scan your badge you are consenting to share your contact information, and other information you provided at registration, with the exhibitor, and thereafter you may be contacted by the exhibitor post-event. If you do not wish the exhibitor to contact you, please communicate this directly with the exhibitor.

Photographs and audio/video recordings of you may be taken at events. We do not use your data to identify you, but to promote our mission, events, and other products and services, and for other legitimate interests.

If you participate in a virtual event hosted by GMAC, GMAC may collect and share information with participating business schools about your interactions with the schools and their content during the virtual event, including for example whether you visited a school’s virtual booth or downloaded a school’s materials. The use of video-enabling technology may result in the disclosure of additional data. For example, images of you, your surroundings, and your shared screen may be disclosed to GMAC, participating schools, and other event participants. You are solely responsible for determining what information you share during a virtual event and whether it is appropriate and lawful to share with other participants. GMAC is not responsible for any business schools’ or other participants’ collection or use of any information you share through your participation in the virtual event. Subject to applicable laws and regulations, GMAC may record and store the video, audio, chat comments and other content presented or shared during a virtual event. This content may be used and disclosed for legitimate purposes, including research and development, communications, security, and corporate and legal matters, as well as sharing that data with the GMAC family companies and others for the same purposes.

As a part of the event registration, we may collect information that may be considered sensitive, including health-related data to evaluate and provide accommodation requests.

Webinars

We typically use third-party webinar platform providers to deliver webinars to you. You may be directed to a platform provider’s website to register your details in order to attend a webinar. The platform provider will collect your name, email address, and certain other information, which they will share with us. They will not share your payment information with us. Your Candidate Profile may be updated to reflect that you attended this webinar. To learn more about how we use your Candidate Profile, Click Here

Many of our webinars are interactive, so your chat messages may be publicly viewable by others, and we may collect your comments, questions, and polling responses, and use them to provide you with answers to your questions, to follow-up with you on events and topics that appear to interest you, and to advance our legitimate interests of improving our webinars and other products and services, research and development, communications, advertising, security, and corporate and legal matters, as well as sharing that data with the GMAC family companies and with others for the same purposes. We may share this data, and your contact information, with the webinar’s co-hosts, speakers, and panelists and permit them to use this data to further their legitimate interests. With your consent (if required), we may permit recipients to use this information to contact you about their products and services. Click Here to learn more about unsubscribing from marketing messages.

Candidate search service

To advance our mission to enable candidates and schools to discover and evaluate each other, we offer you the opportunity to share your personal data with our school subscribers and other organizations. Sharing your personal data makes it possible for these organizations to communicate directly with you. You can join a candidate search service, such as the BusinessBecause school/student connection service and GMASS™ search service, only by giving consent. If you join, we will share your information with schools and other organizations so they may contact you about programs, financial aid, career opportunities, test prep, and participation in research studies. We may contact you directly on behalf of the GMASS participants. We may use your Candidate Profile and other information about you, such as your score sending selections, to create customized lists for GMASS participants.

For more information about the GMASS service Click Here.

Insight tools

For certain services, we collect and analyze your data for the legitimate purpose of providing customized insights to better serve you. For example, when you complete the “ Annual Reader" survey on businessbecause.com, we have a legitimate interest in using the feedback received to help shape the content on our site for both sponsored and non-sponsored editorial content and provide insight for new product features. Similarly, when you register on a GMAC website, our free My Recommendation service provides you with additional information and recommendations on graduate management programs that might interest you.

We may use your performance information (such as scores from a GMAC-owned assessment), product usage data (such as your score sending activity), and location data, in combination with other information, for the legitimate purposes of improving our products and services, understanding user needs and interests, and to better tailor our product and services to meet our customers’ needs. For example, if you have taken the GMAT™ exam, we determine which schools to recommend to you by comparing information about you, including your interests, score sending behaviors, test performance level or ranking, and background information, with those of other individuals to help match you with schools that are a good fit for you.

We may include in your Candidate Profile, data related to your use and performance of our test prep products. For example, we may use your test prep results to assign a ranking or performance level in our search service tools to help schools share communications about their programs with candidates who might be a good fit. To learn more about how we use your Candidate Profile,Click Here .

We may provide online tools to schools and other organizations to host on their websites, such as our GMAT™ Mini-Quiz or “What Motivates You?” survey. If you access a GMAC tool through a third-party website, we will, with your consent (if required), share with that school or organization your email address, metadata, and the country in which you are located (based on your IP address) so they can communicate with you about opportunities and services they offer. Depending on the laws applicable to you, you may not receive your results from the insight tool unless you give this consent. Click Here to learn more about unsubscribing from receiving marketing messages.

Depending on the tool, we may provide additional information to the hosting organization, but only if we inform you. For example, we share your motivation category from your What Motivates You? survey. Your insight tool results may be included in your Candidate Profile. To learn more about your Candidate Profile, Click Here.

Research

We see a world where individuals can benefit from matching their talent and aspiration with the best business school education for them. That is our vision. To advance our vision, our research team may analyze survey results, your Candidate Profile, and other data, including your product usage, product results (test scores), website usage, and information legally obtained from other sources, including schools, school accreditation bodies, data brokers, public record sources, and social media platforms. We use the research results for the legitimate purpose of providing you, schools, and the graduate management education (GME) community with insights across the student lifecycle, from candidates’ first consideration of GME to alums’ career trajectories. This information helps schools develop strategies and provide relevant programs and courses for students. We also analyze your personal information to create parameters for curated school marketing databases and strategies. We may share your personal information with third party service providers to conduct research.

Our published research reports do not include your personal information. To make sure that our aggregation effectively anonymizes our data, we define minimum acceptable group sizes. Many of our reports are publicly available. Other reports are available only to our members, participating organizations, or specific sponsors. To read our publicly available research briefs and papers, visit GMAC - Marketing & Research .

GMAC also analyzes your personal information for our own legitimate interests related to our products and services, such as improving our products and services, developing new products and services, expanding and developing new markets, market research, and demonstrating the value of our products and services. For example, we conduct assessment validity studies for schools to demonstrate how our assessments correlate to classroom performance. When we conduct an assessment validity study for a school or organization, they may share your name or identifier and your GPA with us, so we can compare your performance on our assessment with your performance in their program. The validity study report provided to the school or organization includes only aggregated, anonymous data, not your personal information.

When there is a legitimate interest, we may also share your personal information with third-party researchers, including academic researchers and corporate researchers. For example, we may provide assessment score-sending data to a university professor to explore student mobility. Third-party researchers are contractually obligated to safeguard your personal information and they are not permitted to publish your personal information.

To further our legitimate interests, we may invite you to participate in one or more surveys. You may have provided your email to us or, where legally permitted, we may have obtained it from a third party, such as a school or data broker. When you participate in a research survey, we may collect your email address and contact information so we can contact you to provide you with follow-up reports, an opportunity to enter into a sweepstakes, or follow-up research. We may also request information such as opinions, attitudes, background information, and evaluations of our products and services. This information may be combined with information about you that we have already collected. We value your responses, but research survey participation is optional, and we will honor your request to unsubscribe from these invitations.

Interest-based advertising

We and our partners display interest-based advertising using information gathered about you over time across GMAC and other websites and platforms. This includes our apps. Interest-based advertising or “online behavioral advertising” includes ads served to you after you leave our website, encouraging you to return. They also include ads we think are relevant based on your browsing habits or online activities. These ads are served across the GMAC company family websites and on your social media feeds. They might also be served in emails. We might serve these ads, or third parties may serve ads. They might be about our products or other companies’ products. We may use your personal data to identify people with traits similar to yours, so we can display advertisements that may be of interest to them. Where legally required, we get consent to engage in interest-based advertising.

To decide what is relevant to you, we have a legitimate interest in using information you make available to us when you interact with us, our affiliates, and other third parties. We gather this information using tracking tools (Google Analytics, HubSpot, Salesforce) and cookies and may share it with social media platforms to help us identify people with similar interests. For example, we or our partners might look at your webinar registration or GMAC website browsing behaviors. We might look at these activities on our platforms or the platforms of others. We work with third parties who help gather this information. For more information on interest-based advertising and to manage your preferences for these activities, see Cookies and Similar Technologies Click Here

Direct Marketing

We use your personal information, including your Candidate Profile, purchase information, performance information, and your behavior on our websites, to curate and determine how to personalize our communications with you. We also use it to identify products, events, articles, promotions, research, and services that may be of interest to you, including information and offers from GMAC, schools, and our strategic partners. Because we use this data to benefit you, and for our legitimate purposes, you have the right to object at any time to our use of your personal information in this way. For information on how to object, see Your Rights.

You will receive marketing materials from us if you have requested that information from us. You may also receive marketing materials, email newsletters, or email promotions from us if you have provided consent that confirms you want to receive marketing messages from us. Typically, we obtain consent directly from you, but sometimes, where permitted, a third party may obtain consent from you. You have the right, at any time, to unsubscribe from receiving marketing messages from us. Click Here to learn more about unsubscribing from receiving marketing messages. To give you flexibility in your preferences, if you have an account on multiple GMAC Group websites, changing your preferences on one website will not automatically change your preferences on the other websites.

Promotions

We collect your name, email address, entry requirements, and street address (if needed) to administer sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions. Some of these activities have additional rules that could contain additional information about how we use and disclose your personal information, so it is important that you read the additional rules carefully.

We may share your personal information with third parties who are co-sponsors of sweepstakes, contests and other promotions. If you are a winner of one of these events, we may publish your name and country of residence in accordance with the applicable laws. Our promotions may also request or require consent from you to receive marketing communications from GMAC or others. Here to learn more about unsubscribing from marketing messages. To the extent that the terms and conditions of the rules concerning the treatment of your personal information conflict with this Privacy Statement, the terms and conditions of the rules apply.

Some of our promotions, such as our refer-a-friend campaigns, allow messages to be sent to someone else through our websites. When you use this functionality, you are telling us that you are allowed to provide us with your friend’s name and email address, phone number, or other contact information for our use, including sending marketing emails and texts, where permitted by law.

Ambassadors

We know many prospective students want to hear about graduate management education directly from current students, alumni, and other prospective students. We have created an ambassador program, where students and former students will share their experience and insights with you and answer certain questions you may have about your GME journey. To make the ambassadors more accessible to you, we may host on our website, and on a school’s website, a tool through which you can directly communicate with our ambassadors. We license this tool from a third party, and their privacy policy governs their collection and use of your data associated with using the service. Your information is shared with us, and our use of this information is governed by this Privacy Statement. We use this data for the legitimate purposes of monitoring our ambassadors and improving our ambassador program and for other legitimate purposes.

Customer care

If you contact us for support or to report a problem or concern (regardless of whether you have created an account) we collect and store your contact information, messages, and other data about you such as your name, email address, location, operating system, IP address, and any other data you provide or that we collect through automated means. We use this data for the legitimate purposes of responding to you and researching your question or concern. We may also use this data, and share it with our vendors, to improve products and services, to comply with legal processes, to enforce our terms and conditions, to protect our operations, to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or those of yours or others; and to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

Fraud prevention & security

We collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal information to detect and prevent fraud or other unlawful activity, to confirm authorized users, and to protect and maintain the security of our products and services and their users.

Corporate and legal uses

We collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal information (a) as part of a corporate transaction, such as a merger, sale of assets, or an equity investment that result in a new subsidiary or corporate affiliate of GMAC, (b) when compelled by law to do so (such as by court order, investigation, or subpoena), including laws outside your country of residence, (c) as required by legal proceedings (including defense of legal claims), (d) to enforce our terms and conditions, (e) to protect our operations, (f) to protect the rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others, (g) to resolve disputes, and (h) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

Your rights and how to exercise them

In many countries, individuals have the rights listed in the table below. These rights are subject to applicable restrictions and limitations. In certain cases, your request may be denied based on a legitimate exception, such as where we are prevented from disclosing such information based on legal requirements, where we have overriding legitimate grounds for retaining and/or processing the data for fraud prevention or security concerns, or where we need to establish, exercise or defend against legal claims. For example, if a test taker has committed fraud in taking the NMAT by GMAC exam, GMGC (India) may alert the other GMAC entities of this incident to protect the integrity of our other tests and services.

Please visit the tab titled Cookies and Similar Technologies for more information about changing your other preferences