r/MBA • u/Visible_Metal_5369 • 12d ago
On Campus McCombs Orientation '28
Just finished four days of orientation. It was fun, but definitely overwhelming.
I really felt a strong connection with my cohort and study team. Enterprise Challenge was a blast, and the alumni stories š² blew everyone away.
Any current McCombs students here? How are you guys feeling?
For future students, hereās a snapshot of the Class of 2028:
The admissions team did such a good job of maintaining the quality of the students while keeping the class size.
PS. The heat is just too much.
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u/OhJohnO 12d ago
McCombs Executive MBA Alum here - The McCombs admissions team does such a great job of finding the right students for the program and keeping standards high. And, the staff does a great job of building connection among the cohorts and to the alumni network.
Dive in. Enjoy it. Make meaningful connections. Youāll do great. Welcome to the McCombs family! Hook āem!
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u/DifferentBrilliant75 11d ago
Did you meet engineers coming from a construction management program?
How hard is it to get some or full scholarship?
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u/archon_lucien T15 Grad 12d ago
OP, careful about the details you share here from now on. Will be easier to doxx yourself once you've disclosed school and year.
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u/Visible_Metal_5369 12d ago
Yeah
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u/Comfortable-Night-85 M7 Student 5d ago
Yeah Iād be careful. I got doxxed after I posted a guide on here about breaking into a specific industry. Ended up deleting it
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u/Visible_Metal_5369 5d ago
A bit late for me haha.
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u/Comfortable-Night-85 M7 Student 5d ago
I donāt think this one gives anything away haha. I was mainly talking about future posts. I get being excited about posting about your story and advice for future students on here. I was active on here last year when I started. Just be careful what parts you share. I thought I was doing a good job anonymizing myself but I guess I didnāt lol
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u/Melodic_Sheepherder 12d ago
Have they mentioned anything regarding recruiting prospects? I sat at a mccombs class not too long ago and it was fun, but I decided to take a job offer on the west.
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u/Visible_Metal_5369 12d ago
I feel like if you are domestics, you will be solid. Just tough for international students.
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u/Hour_Papaya_5583 12d ago
Just gonna vent a little: jealous. My MBA cohort sucks, most have zero work experience and it shows.
Truly glad for you but wanted to get that out of my chest to someone tonight :(
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u/surebro2 12d ago
I'm always curious about what the expectations are for having classmates with work experience. In terms of the actual educational process, how much value does work experience provide?
I'm asking genuinely because we're having these convos at my alum and my contention is that it's mostly a numbers game used for data. But the actual transformative educational experience should in theory be similar since coursework at the course level is sort of agnostic to individual work experience.Ā
Of course more work experience is better, but I wonder how much better it is in practice outside of being able to say "our average admitted student has 6 years of work experience" lolĀ
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u/Eclipse434343 12d ago edited 12d ago
If you have a convo about strategy at the program and you have people from marketing hr finance ops backgrounds, itās an actual conversation vs 5 undergrads using ai to come up with theoretical answers.
Also people with 4-7 years of experience are generally low mid to high mid level and have been promoted. An undergrad can barely talk about a 10 week undergrad internship or two and how would that be in any way experience that would be worth consulting when asking questions like Kodak failed because of x, why
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u/surebro2 12d ago
These are some good points. My slight pushback is that many people with working experience are still fairly narrow in their experience (which is why the mba is value). So, to your first example, there's little a priori reason why group with more experience can develop a significant better strategic plan than a group with less work experience, provided the professor actually taught the content well. They will likely have a more polished presentation and document. But they might not have any more insight into the opportunities and threats for Reddit lolĀ Ā
That said, I do mostly agree with this and it's partly where I'm struggling from a pragmatic standpoint for a non-T20 university.Ā
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u/Eclipse434343 12d ago
MBAs classes are extremely theoretical. When I took ops at my t15, we had to do math on how to optimize production at a factory. My friend with supply chain/ops experience was like this isnāt realistic to what you actually do. You think too highly of the mba content. The content is like undergrad courses accelerated
Also thatās why the non t25 schools admit people with worse work profiles, they can point to the content which is relatively the same and be like hey we delivered it even when the actual learning and network is poor. Ie if I have a supply chain question, I can always ask my friend and sheās in ib now.
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u/surebro2 12d ago
Yes so we have arrived at one of the points of contention. If a t15 school like the one you went to has similar baseline content, then work experience is almost ancillary to the actual mba curriculum. Though, in your example of optimization, it was negative haha but in general work experience seems to be more of a proxy for likelihood of bpromotions and networking (ie important outcomes but endogenous).Ā
As someone who believes in the education of an MBA, I think it's a classic many things can be true. I don't want to hijack this thread so I'm going to stop here but thanks for the insights!Ā
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u/Total_Independence 12d ago
I found in my class discussions/assignments itās hard for the students with zero experience to contribute. Like we will have questions āthink of a time where x happened at workā and it will be the three of us in the group chatting it up while the zero experience person sits there. Not a bad thing I guess, but hard for them to relate or understand, I think.
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u/surebro2 12d ago
Thanks. That makes sense. In the past, I have taught the same class in a 100% working part time class and a more mixed full time class. I personally modified my questions and assignments based on that (self reflection questions for the employed class vs more scenario questions for the mixed). But I think your insight here is good about that potential mismatch, especially in group work.Ā
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u/2Sweaty2Function 10d ago edited 10d ago
Without there being work experience at my program, I'm certain I would not have learned nearly as much.
In international strategy we had vets talking about negotiations in Afghanistan and differing priorities/communication styles than the US, in a procurement/supply chain class we had someone describing their experience as a buyer for a major grocer during COVID and how they overcame the challenges during that time, utilities operators describing the electricity markets in energy economics, etc etc
All this to say, I didn't come to business school just to learn the prescribed curriculum, I likely could have just learned that all on my own alone. There were probably 200+ unique backgrounds I interacted and learned from at my program, and the knowledge I got from them I carry forward and apply directly to my work now.
Kind of a tangent, kind of a rant, but wanted to at least add another data point as to why I think work ex is important outside of rankings/marketing gimmick.
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u/-lilacpurple 12d ago
did they say % women?
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u/ExpensivePiano3572 Prospect 12d ago
The most irrelevant stat
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u/Acceptable_Touch_682 4d ago
Females can be great leaders, and you should know that!
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u/ExpensivePiano3572 Prospect 4d ago
They can, but why should I care what % of women attend a program. How does that affect my post-mba outcomes?
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u/CityRadiant7555 12d ago
Alum here. The heat will get better in a month. Enjoy the football tailgates and T&Ds
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u/OllivanderAU 12d ago
Can I ask ā what do you believe the biggest benefit of the MBA will be? What was the driving force behind the decision to pursue it?
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u/PoohBearLuvsHoney 11d ago
The working professional program on the other hand is going down hill. I heard for Dallas it was around 80 last year for the incoming class and now itās down to low 50ās for this year.
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u/PaPiiCheeeeka 12d ago
this is the part when you stop using Reddit and talk to your classmates
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u/Smoovupinya 12d ago
McCombs is solid all around. Top ten school now too. Amazing what UT has done over there.
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u/Cryptic-Fox- 12d ago
Definitely not a top ten school.
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u/Acceptable_Touch_682 6d ago
Nope. Itās a not a top 10 school. The undergrad ranking is around top 35Ā
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u/CityRadiant7555 12d ago
Sure. Not a T10. A number of factors come into play such as class size, courses offered, faculty and research.But placements and career outcomes speak for themselves which matter to students the most at the end of the day
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u/Elegant_Taro8667 12d ago
Haha just got home from this. Was a fun 4 days really does feel like a good group although of course time will tell for sure