At Menlo Coaching, we’re fans of the UT Austin McCombs School of Business. Its extensive ties to the city of Austin and its deep business relationships with members of the Texas Triangle make it an ideal place to explore a wide variety of industries. Hook ’em horns!
David White, our Founding Partner, sat down with Rodrigo Malta, the Managing Director of MBA Recruiting and Admissions to get the inside scoop on Admissions at McCombs.
This part of the interview includes:
- McCombs career placement portfolio
- Placement in traditional industries
- Role that alumni play in recruiting
- Career coaches at McCombs
- Job placement for international students: H-1B visa issuance
You can watch more from David and Rodrigo, with videos covering McCombs MBA Admissions (with Video Essay Tips!) and The McCombs MBA: Its Ties to Dallas, Houston (& Beyond).
Interview with McCombs Admissions Director
Ready to start your application? Apply to McCombs
McCombs Employment Outcomes
McCombs career placement portfolio works across a number of industries.
- Technology. McCombs places about 20-26% of their students in technology. When looked at by region, McCombs places a large number of students in Seattle, the Bay Area, and Austin with a small number in Dallas as well. Corporations such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Google all have ties to McCombs.
- Consulting. About 20-25% of the class enters consulting. Consulting firms with strong ties to McCombs include McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Deloitte.
- Energy. McCombs highlights a concentration of its offers called “Energy Finance” that allows students to build a knowledge base around both traditional oil and gas, as well as offering a clean tech concentration that focuses on renewable energy. McCombs places a lot of students in Austin—Texas’ clean energy hub—as well as California.
- Finance and Marketing. McCombs regularly places students at JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Corporate finance is also popular with students. As far as marketing is concerned, students often work for the many CPG firms in the Texas Triangle.
- CPG. McCombs places students in CPG corporations throughout the Texas Triangle. Dallas has Dr. Pepper, PepsiCo, and Frito Lay. Houston has the Minute Maid headquarters which is part of Coca Cola. Austin itself has a number of CPG startups and many inroads with the local brand, Whole Foods which is now a part of Amazon.
UT Austin’s Alumni Network
McCombs leverages the alumni contacts available through the Texas-sized UT Austin network. There are over 100,00 McCombs alumni and over 500,000 living UT Austin alumni. Part of McCombs’ career management course offered to first-year students teaches them how to reach out to and connect with alumni all over the globe.
The Texas McCombs Seminar Receptions are annual, summertime, industry conferences that bring together interns in a particular city with recent grads along with other local McCombs graduates. Rodrigo Malta recently attended one in Denver that had thirty to forty attendees from all of the categories above. The summer receptions happen all over: New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, and Austin.
Career Coaching for McCombs MBA Students
McCombs provides career advisors for its students with an open appointment policy. Rather than being assigned to a single advisor, MBAs at McCombs get to know all the career advisors, their backgrounds, and expertise and then begin to tailor their visits to a counselor whose knowledge base matches student interests.
Because of the open appointment policy, students are welcome to go back and forth between various advisors to get specific information faster.
H-1B Visas & Advice for International Students
Current politics and H-1B Visa issues have impacted international enrollment at McCombs, as they have in the American MBA world at large. UT Austin is fortunate insofar as the technology and consulting industries tend to be among the most welcoming of international students.
As always, it is important for international applicants and students to have a plan B when it comes to American schools and the H-1B Visa. But McCombs helps to prep international students from orientation onward to understand how to best get settled in the US, and to understand the available resources that exist for international students. There is also plenty of information on American football to help international students get ready for the legendary Texas tailgates.
