McCombs (UT Austin) 2013 Calling All Applicants

Pretty much the first question I asked McCombs students and alumni during my research the past ~4 yrs. was if the student body was collegial or competitive. Most schools will claim they are collegial because they all stress team collaboration by leveraging diverse backgrounds. However, I felt like I talked to enough people (students, alumni, people who worked w/ McCombs grads, 3rd party admissions counselors) to really sense that McCombs is a genuinely collegial atmosphere. Even without soliciting for that answer, mostly everyone stressed the helpful intra-student collaboration and close relationships as their favorite part of their McCombs experience. This included helping each other interview (even at times for the same company), second-year students helping first-year students w/ the difficult quantitative courses, and more. If you think that more fierce competition is what will jump-start your motivation to succeed, McCombs may not be the place for you. It’s not that the students don’t push each other, because they do, but they say it’s in a healthy way that pushes the greater whole to succeed.

You’re assigned in your first-year to a 4-to-6-person study group, which is part of a larger ~65-person cohort for all your core classes. Most of your networking outside of your cohort will come from the extracurricular groups, etc. Once you move to your elective courses, you’ll be paired up w/ more hodge-podge groups of students.
Finally, the Students and Significant Others (SAS) organization provides support and social activities to introduce McCombs couples and families to Austin. SAS usually has about 50 couples per class, and the school claims it as one of the most active and resourceful clubs at McCombs. There are sub groups for males, international couples, and couples w/ kids. As a back-up option, you can always just bring your spouse to the other types of activities (tailgating/games, trivia Thursdays, etc.) until they develop a few closer friends.

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