AIGAC Comes Of Age In The MBA Admissions Ecosystem

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Twenty years ago, at a GMAC conference in San Francisco, four MBA admissions consultants took the stage under a deliberately provocative title: “Consultants: Love ’Em. Hate ’Em. Use ‘Em. ”

The consultants–Linda Abraham, Ricardo Betti, Maxx Duffy and Graham Richmond–had no idea what to expect. But they instinctively knew they would would be facing a skeptical audience of business school admissions officers.

“We weren’t sure if they were going to throw tomatoes at us,” recalls Richmond, a co-founder of Clear Admit, which once did admissions consulting.  “But the room was packed and that was the most telling thing to me.”

‘THERE WAS A LOT OF DOUBT AND MISTRUST’

At the time, many admissions officers viewed consultants as interlopers — or worse. One admissions officer stood up during the session and angrily suggested consultants were taking mentorship away from schools. As Duffy remembers it, “There was a lot of doubt and a lot of mistrust.”

That tension — thick in the air that day — would lead directly to the founding of the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC), which this spring holds its 20th annual conference May 14–15 at Duke University, with a visit to UNC.

What began as a defensive maneuver has become a professional community of more than 200 vetted consultants worldwide. Still, the majority of consultants offering admissions advice are not members. The Poets&Quants directory of MBA admission consultants, which allows users to filter for AIGAC membership, boasts nearly 500 admission counselors.

For AIGAC, the story actually begins in 2005 at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, where then MBA admissions director Dawna Clarke invited a small group of educational consultants — many from abroad — to campus. Her embrace of the profession was based on her belief that the consultants were first-line “ambassadors” for business schools, helping candidates decide where to go and how to put their best effort forward.

‘IT REALLY BEGAN WITH DAWNA CLARKE’

“It really didn’t start with the educational consultants,” Duffy says. “It really began with Dawna Clarke.”

Betti, a Brazilian consultant and former physician who earned his MBA at MIT, remembers arriving at Tuck and being stunned. “I didn’t know there were so many consultants around the world,” he says. “From South Korea, Japan. There were 25 people.”

Betti, who had been advising Brazilian candidates since the late 1980s, immediately saw the need for an association. “Since I came from the medical profession, we had associations of peers to discuss best practices,” he says. “For us it was of immense importance to show admission officers that we gave ethical advice.”

A GMAC PANEL LED TO THE FORMATION OF THE TRADE GROUP

He began talking with Linda Abraham, the founder of Accepted.com, about forming a group. She suggested inviting Maxx Duffy and Graham Richmond.

A year later came the GMAC panel.

“Linda submitted a session idea,” Richmond says. “The whole point of the panel was to suggest that the schools should not hate on us. It behooves you to pay attention to us.”

Right after that session, the four co-founders — Abraham, Betti, Duffy, and Richmond — agreed to form a nonprofit organization with a formal code of ethics.

“We wanted to remedy that feeling that you crossed to the dark side,” Richmond says.

In November 2006, AIGAC was incorporated in Sacramento, California.

DRAWING A BRIGHT ETHICAL LINE

Back then, the biggest fear among admissions directors was simple: Were consultants writing essays?

“There was a lot of bad press linked to educational consultants,” Duffy recalls. “Basically the concern was that consultants were writing essays for applicants.”

The code of ethics was designed to address that head-on. Betti puts it plainly: “Never lie on the application. Always bring the most honest and transparent information to the schools. We only help them craft a more suitable version of their lives in a better light but always in a honest and transparent way.”

The group’s principles of practice explicitly state that “clients write their own essays” and that  “clients’ recommenders write their own recommendations” (see below). They also make clear the need to “avoid any relationship that creates or appears to create a conflict of interest. For example, AIGAC’s policies prohibit ongoing professional affiliations with graduate school admissions offices, regardless of whether the role is full-time, part-time, temporary, volunteer, paid, unpaid, employee, or contractor status.”

NOT EVERYONE IN ADMISSIONS CONSULTING WAS THRILLED

Richmond worked with Dawna Clarke and Rose Martinelli at the University of Chicago on drafting the principles. “We wanted to see what would make them comfortable. What would they need,” he says.

Not everyone in the consulting industry was thrilled. “When we first started there were a lot of admission consultants out there who were pretty annoyed that they couldn’t automatically become members,” Richmond says. Membership required agreeing to the code and demonstrating experience.

Candy Lee LaBalle, who began in 2005 after working on the verbal section of the old GMAT and helping a client with Harvard essays, attended her first AIGAC conference in 2007. She has missed only two since — “one because I was eight months pregnant and the other because I had just bought a house.”

In the early days, conferences were small. “Veritas, Clear Admit — the firms were small back then,” LaBalle says. “We would come together and share what we were doing and what is the ethical way to do it and how do we get the schools to trust us.”

Originally, consultants would schedule meetings adjacent to GMAC and rent their own rooms. Over time, schools began opening their doors.

Duffy remembers 2007 vividly: “That led right to our first conference in Chicago at Booth and Kellogg. Rose Martinelli was amazing. She was open and willing to listen. From that moment forward, it just started to grow.”

FROM SKEPTICISM TO INVITATION

The turning points came slowly.

At one early meeting at Stanford, LaBalle recalls, “The door slams and someone sits in a chair. And it is Dee Leopold. She came to check us out.” The following year, the group was invited to the Harvard Business School campus (See Suddenly Cozy: MBA Consultants & Business Schools).

Betti calls eventually holding a conference at Stanford “one of our greatest victories. Our supposed enemy invited us to do a conference there.”

Richmond, who served as president in 2010 and 2011, says, “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined Harvard and Stanford hosting admission consultants.”

LaBalle, currently president of AIGAC, has seen the shift firsthand. “At first, there was this idea that we were out to game the system,” she says. “But applying to a highly selective program is hard. This is tough. We are there to serve as a buffer to help people through it.”

She describes one encounter at Columbia when she explained what consultants actually do. “At the end he said, ‘You opened my eyes completely.’”

Paulo Oliveira, partner and managing director of Philadelphia Consulting in Brazil and this year’s conference chair, says the early conversations were “tense and delicate.” Schools would ask bluntly: Do you write essays?

“We want to support an organization that is doing fair, ethical work with clients,” Oliveira recalls of those discussions. Over time, “they saw the value of our work and opened up to us.”

A GLOBAL, TIGHT-KNIT COMMUNITY

Today, AIGAC counts just over 200 members across Japan, Brazil, Spain, India, and beyond.

“It’s not that we have a huge number of members,” Duffy says. “What it is is a professional group that really cares about each other. It’s like family.”

For many independents, that community is essential. LaBalle describes a WhatsApp group where consultants share information about unusual client situations. “You have this resource center that is always there.”

Oliveira calls daily exchange among members “a huge benefit.” A second major benefit: “having the opportunity to have very grand conversations with the schools.”

Those conversations have grown more sophisticated. This year’s Duke conference will include panels on career outcomes and employability in uncertain times, visa issues for international students, and AI in the curriculum.

“We are going through so many changes in the world of MBA and business education,” Oliveira says. “The conference furnishes us with an in-depth understanding of the programs and new trends so we can better inform our clients.”

Richmond notes that ethical challenges never disappear — they simply evolve. “Now the concern is AI,” Duffy says. “I guess it never goes away.”

WHY CONSULTANTS PERSIST

Despite the normalization of coaching, LaBalle is blunt: “I don’t think you need a consultant. Because there is a lot of information out there.”

But, she adds, “A good consultant is going to make sure you don’t screw up. You will probably understand admissions better and increase your odds to some degree.”

Many clients are from McKinsey or Goldman Sachs, laser-focused on M7 programs. Others come from the military, India, Indonesia, or Brazil. Increasingly, candidates hedge with European options; Oliveira recently had a client admitted to MIT who chose INSEAD based on ROI and geography.

The stakes are high. “Mid-way through the process they hit a wall and say this is difficult,” LaBalle says. “For a lot of them it is the first time you are being rejected.”

Betti, who left medicine because he found it emotionally overwhelming, sees the contrast. “When you were a medical doctor you helped people in the worst moments of their lives,” he says. “When you are an admissions consultant you also help people but in one of the best moments of their lives.”

He has now helped more than 4,000 students earn MBA admissions — and plans to continue “until my mind doesn’t allow it.”

20 YEARS LATER

From that tomato-risking GMAC panel to a 20th conference at Duke, AIGAC’s trajectory mirrors the evolution of MBA admissions itself: more global, more competitive, more complex — and more professional.

“There were plenty of applicants worldwide to service,” Duffy says, reflecting on early fears about competitors. “I never felt I lost clients due to another educational consultant’s firm.”

Richmond puts it simply: forming AIGAC “was a smart idea.”

Twenty years ago, consultants gathered to prove they weren’t the enemy. Today, membership in AIGAC is, as Betti puts it, “a positive differential.”

The skepticism hasn’t vanished entirely. But neither has the demand.

And every May, as consultants convene — this year in Durham — they return to the same foundational promise made in that tense San Francisco ballroom: ethical guidance, transparency, and alignment with the schools they once feared would throw tomatoes.

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