swank6
Thanks for the feedback, asimov. I must admit that although sports are obviously not the greatest reason to pick a b-school, Texas' sports would actually be a huge bonus to me. I am a crazy sports fan (primarily football and basketball), and I went to Boston University for undergrad which has no football team and a terrible basketball team. I'm from San Francisco and follow the 49ers and Warriors religiously, but I've never been able to really get into college football or basketball because I don't have a strong allegiance to any team.
Did you find that Austin feels like a college town? From what I hear, it is a good balance of college town but also "real" city, which is one of the things I like. I'm not applying to quite a few other schools because I don't want to go somewhere that is primarily college-town only (ie Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale, etc). Also, as an undergrad, what did you perceive as the main strengths/weaknesses of McCombs in terms of curriculum/faculty? I'm currently an event planner and looking to career switch into Consulting, to give some brief background.
Austin is what you want to make it to be. If you stay close to campus, it has a college town feel to in, which appeals to me. However, if you live a couple miles out, it’s a vibrant city with a lot to do (the campus very close to downtown). Austin is famous for its live music. There are two major annual music festivals: South By Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits (ACL). It’s a big outdoor sports town: Lance Armstrong calls it home. And UT sports is HUGE, especially football. In football, we are always in contention for the national championship. In basketball, we always make the playoffs. In baseball, we won quite a few national champions and always make the College World Series. In swimming, we have Olympic swimmers on the team, as well as the head coach for the Olympic team. If you are sports fan, you would love UT.
For me, life outside of school is almost as important as the school itself. I much rather spent the 2 years happy. One thing that’s important for me in school selection is location and weather. Austin is warm year around. For those Southern, who are not used to trekking through snow and ice or shoveling snow, Austin is ideal. After all, most of the academic year up north will be cold.
I wasn’t a business major in undergrad. But I did take some classes in the business school. Usually for the non-business majors, they give you the newer associate professors or lecturers. However, I had some classes taught by former associate dean (if I remember correctly) and a very funny business law professor. The professors are generally very helpful during office hours, even with large undergraduate classes. My friends in the Business Honors Program (BHP) had much more intimate relationships with their professors. I think BHP has a MBA style learning environment.
I think it would be wise to expand your school list, since the bay area schools are extremely hard to get into due the small class sizes. As far as job opportunities goes, all the major consulting companies recruit at McCombs. I know a couple of BHPer (undergrad) who are working at Bain (admittedly, I do not know very many business majors).
Nov 20
08 Nov 2009, 10:58
