McCombs (UT Austin) 2013 Calling All Applicants

The brochure of program information they give you when you visit or when you talk to them at admissions fairs (or I think they will mail it). It's also available online here:
https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/MBA/Full- ... ation.aspx

I'm not sure how easy it is to get access to before you're a student (maybe via a current student?), but McCombs will have an online résumé binder that will show you who landed those top consulting positions. Engaging them on their strategies will probably be your best bet. Disclaimer: It's obviously going to be less invasive/awkward if you've already decided to join McCombs or wait until you're a current student.

A little easier route if you want clearer answers now might be to just contact a current MAC student and ask to be put in touch w/ a 2nd-year student who's heading to Companies X, Y, or Z.

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Any R2 admit received the welcome package?

No, according to the FB group, they haven't gone out yet. They are supposed to ship this week.

Haven't received mine either... I'm international, so maybe it's a little bit longer for me...

Let's talk scholarships. How many of you who interviewed in R1 and R2 were offered $$$? I was told by current students that since this is a state school they are not as strong on handing out $$ as much as say Rice or SMU. I have an admit from SMU with $$ but just interviewed at McCombs. Given my long term goal of getting placed at Deloitte, PWc type firms, I am wondering if it is worth paying the full tuition for the brand and the network..Thoughts ?? thanks!

You can search the word 'scholarships' in the thread and look back at how many people got them. You're right though not many were handed out.

If you are applying round 3 you won't get a scholarship I don't think. According to the website, round 2 was the deadline for scholarship consideration.

As for your goals, I don't know much about Rice or SMU, but McCombs places very well with Deloitte and PWC. According to business week Deloitte consulting is the top employer at McCombs and PWC is 3rd. Take a look at the Rice and SMU employment reports and see if they will get you where you want to be. But in general I'd say that McCombs is considered a tier above those schools.

There is no doubt in my mind that McCombs is above the rest in texas. I should have been clearer. But given my long term goals in MC at Deloitte or PWC, would it matter where I went? Surely a candidate from one school would not be getting paid more than another candidate with the same profile just because they went to a school with higher rankings. I am certain there is no spreadsheet at any of these MCs that says the average salary for someone graduating from McCombs is 120K vs someone from Cox gets 100K. Please correct me if I am wrong

I don't think anyone can really answer your question definitively. Your best bet is to just plug in the numbers into a spreadsheet, and see where things fall. My gut tells me that if your scholarship at Rice/SMU approaches 100%, then they would probably be a better situation. I just don't think you'll get that much of a kiss for going to McCombs if your goals are to work for a PwC or Deloitte (especially within Texas) as compared to Rice or SMU.

Now, as your scholarship amount starts to dwindle, then I think your ROI at a full ticket McCombs goes up.

In any case, I do agree that McCombs presents more opportunities for the majority of people than do the other schools in Texas. However, the bottomline is that firms like PwC and Deloitte are going to recruit at all three schools. So, what sets you apart is going to be your networking skills, your past work experience, and your interview ability. So, if the scholarship money is substantial, I'd go with Rice or SMU (depending on if you like Houston or Dallas more). Heck, you might even be able to throw A&M (Mays) into the bunch, as well, if you can get them to pay for your school.

I don't think it's a question of salary but of getting looked at and getting the job (and internship) to begin with. Deloitte, especially, seems to have a very strong recruiting relationship with McCombs. PwC is listed by BusinessWeek as a top employer from SMU so in that case it would seem sufficient.

I do also think that while either might help you meet your short-term goals, the McCombs experience and network will continue to pay long-term dividends. In other words, you might start at PwC with the same salary either way but there might be a longer-term advantage to McCombs. I say that with little knowledge of SMU though, so take that into account.

I've worked with a few Rice, McCombs, and SMU MBA alums, and have lived in Houston and Dallas. From what I can gather, what you say about networking is largely true. It basically goes McCombs >>> Rice >>>>>> SMU in terms of networking strength. That is not to be ignored. That being said, student loan debt looms large, and can really sting for quite a few years (as I'm sure most of you have considered).

Take the following two cases into account:

1) a friend of mine got a JD/MBA from a top notch school. Even so, he is currently pretty much living like a college student because he has about 150K in debt.
2) I got a full ride plus a stipend to do an MS in Econ. I finished up back in '08... and I'm still paying the little debt that I had that covered my leftover living expenses.

Anyway, not sure if those points drove home the point or not. So, I'll spell it out: debt sucks, and should be avoided when possible.

My only response to this is 'how'? And I keep getting a very similar response when I talk to 2nd year students not just within Texas but in other top schools in the country. It's almost they have been trained to give the same answers. When I dig a little deeper, they don't tell me anything convincing. Is it because it might get you a foot in the door or interview offer at a job/position, 10 years after you graduate, because a school like McCombs or say Michigan have a large alum and are spread nationwide OR is there some other significant advantage that I am clearly missing? I ask the 'how' question very humbly purely from a position of curiosity and inorder to make a better judgement when it comes to ROI, I apologize in advance for derailing a McCombs thread and if I sounded arrogant.

I tend to agree that future opportunities for someone who went to SMU and landed a consulting job with Deloitte vs a McCombs grad at Deloitte consulting will be pretty negligible. Most employers ten years down the road will care very little where you went to school because you will be so far removed from it. What will be important at that point will be your work experience and job performance.

The major differentiator between McCombs and Cox or Jones - in my opinion - is your chances of actually getting your foot in the door with Deloitte or PWC. I don't know much about Rice or SMU either but after looking online for a few minutes I can't tell if Deloitte even recruits at those two schools. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be possible to get a job there through your own footwork but it will be much more difficult than at McCombs where Deloitte recruits many. SMU placed 4 grads at PWC last year, I didn't see anything at Rice.

Look at this way, according to BW McCombs placed 20 with Deloitte and 7 with PWC. The class size is 260 of which 24% went into consulting. So 27 out of about 62 seeking consulting went to Deloitte or PWC. That's over 40% which are pretty good odds.

It'd be more of a risk to go to a lower tier school if you have your heart set on Deloitte/PWC, but the scholarship might make it worth it.

Love the breakdown, class size is however 504. 22% of the class at Deloitte still a good number.
https://www.businessweek.com/bschools/ra ... ustin.html

Pretty certain that is inclusive of all programs (e.g. EMBA, DFW, Houston, Mexico City...). The full time enrollment from UT's website is pretty much in line with what was said:
https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/MBA/Full-Time/Admissions/Class-Profile.aspx

Given that many non-FT folks don't try to change companies, using the stats above might not be that flawed. Then again, you could very well convince me that either some large percentage of the 27 had worked for PwC or Deloitte prior to their MBA or that more than 62 had sought out consulting positions... and again, you might have some people leaking into that 27 figure from the non-FT program.

Long story short, it's not quite that simple. Don't overthink it, though. If you know that PwC and Deloitte recruit at all three schools, then that's just about all you need to know. I seriously doubt that those companies have a certain numerical target for hiring at each school. You're largely on equal footing once you get the interview with everyone else who is interviewing in the US. You're competing against anyone they interview. So, again, as long as you can land the interview (thanks mostly due to the on-campus recruitment), then the debt savings is going to be your biggest variable.

As to how much networking comes into play, you really shouldn't discount that much. The caliber of person that you'll be dealing with (and the kind of jobs they will have in the future) is very correlated with things like their GMAT score, GPA, and past work experience. Given that, 10 years down the road, would you rather be friends with someone who is in middle management at some regional bank or a managing director of a bulge bracket IB shop? Obviously, the latter is going to open more doors.

Heck, some people treat business school as a way to meet future business partners. A good (brilliant) friend of mine went to MIT solely to meet a partner for his business. As soon as he did, they both dropped out of school, moved to California, and got rolling on their idea.

The 504 is the total enrollment between the two years for the full time program. The BW profile only takes into account the FT program, there are separate rankings and profiles for PT and executive programs.

I'm looking at the viewbook that I got at my interview (someone posted a link to the online version a few posts back, take a look at page 29), and the 2014 class size is actually 237. So the 40% plus to Deloitte and PWC should be right, but you are correct that a portion are likely sponsored by the companies.

But anyway, I was just pointing out the numbers to show my point, which is that McCombs places well with the firms that ace is interested in. Probably quite a bit better than Jones or Cox.

That’s all great advice mentioned above, and it sounds like you have a particularly difficult choice depending on the scholarship percentage because they’re all top-30’ish schools in TX (i.e., you are getting close to splitting hairs between the schools). Even though it’s a small program/city, I also wonder why more people on here don’t consider A&M’s Mays program if they want to stay in TX. By applying to those 3 programs, though, you’ve obviously thought through the relevance of geographic placement on networking efficacy.

I’ve wondered myself about the long-term effect of MBA choice because I’ve heard a lot of people say the name virtually disappears on a résumé after your initial job placement. However, here are some considerations:

- Which alumni base would you most want to be associated w/ based on their future mgmt. potential? Those people will carry more weight within their companies if you need to call them for a foot-in-the-door connection.

- Which school has the most alumni at the consulting companies you’re looking at? The greater the number, the greater likelihood you will know one of them or be able to reach out to one of them (other than LinkedIn, I know McCombs maintains the McCombs TODAY site where alumni post internships/jobs to a board). Moreover, the student bodies at both Cox and Jones are half the size of McCombs, and that will likely equate to less people at those companies.

- Which school will have you the most energized to attend, represent, and later visit? Your love for the school will play a factor in keeping you engaged w/ students and alumni via career fairs, tailgating sessions, alumni clubs, etc. I get a lot of UM grads stopping by my office because they see my memorabilia, or they stop me to chat in the airport/store w/ a “Go Blue” if I’m wearing a shirt. I definitely get that vibe w/ the “Hook ‘em” mantra.

- If you decide to leave the state, which school will be the most respected by potential employers? It may not mean much after initial placement, but it could be a tie-breaker.

- Consulting companies carry a precedent of hiring from the top MBA programs. Do you feel any of your co-workers would implicitly cast doubt on your potential by which school you attended? Yes, this is ignorantly shallow, but is sometimes reality.

As far as long-term earnings potential, Businessweek keeps stats on avg. graduate consultant salaries 5-10 yrs. post-graduation, as well as 10-20 yrs. post-graduation (feel free to apply the obligatory correlation ≠ causation argument here): Cox ($83K; $126K), Jones ($91K; no 10-20 yr. data), and McCombs ($105K; $123K).

Hope this helps.

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Good post, and I agree with nearly all of it. I'd only add a little grain of salt to the BW salary numbers, because they don't control for the individual inputs, location of employment, or employer - the biggest problem being the first. Obviously, since McCombs is harder to get into, it's going to have relatively more accomplished and brighter individuals. That's why I mentioned that so long as you can land the interview, then you're on equal footing.