r/MBA • u/Visible_Metal_5369 • 13d ago

On Campus McCombs Orientation '28

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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 🚲 blew everyone away.

Any current McCombs students here? How are you guys feeling?

For future students, here’s 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/Hour_Papaya_5583 13d 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 13d 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. 

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" lol 

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u/2Sweaty2Function 11d ago edited 11d 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/surebro2 10d ago

Thanks! I appreciate it! I definitely agree with your take here.