McCombs School of Business

The McCombs School of Business, also referred to as the McCombs School or simply McCombs, is a business school at The University of Texas at Austin. In addition to the main campus in Downtown Austin, McCombs offers classes outside Central Texas in Dallas, Houston and internationally in Mexico City. The McCombs School of Business offers undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs for their average 6,000 students each year, adding to its 88,000 member alumni base from a variety of business fields.[2] In addition to traditional classroom degree programs, McCombs is home to 14 collaborative research centers, the international business plan competition: Venture Labs Investment Competition (formerly known as "MOOT Corp"), and executive education programs. The McCombs School of Business is universally regarded as the leading business school in Texas and the Southwest, and ranks among the elite graduate business schools in the United States and the world. This highly respected school had a 100% job placement in 2012 at graduation.[3] McCombs is also the oldest public business school in Texas.[4] Academic profile McCombs is made up of a total of 6,082 students, 4,296 undergraduates, 1,684 postgraduate, and 102 doctoral students.[15] All undergraduates classes are at the main campus in Austin while almost a quarter of postgraduate student classes are held outside of Central Texas in Dallas, Houston, and Mexico City.[16] In addition to traditional graduation routes, McCombs offers a five-year program where students earn their BBA and Master in Professional Accounting (MPA) degrees concurrently.[17] The Texas Business Foundations Program (Texas BFP) offers non-business majors the opportunity to grasp the fundamentals of business operations and minor in business while pursuing any undergraduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. Students in the Business Foundations Program take seven business courses (two lowerdivision and five upper-division) in addition to their existing undergraduate course work. Students who complete the program are capable of integrating their minor into their future career.[18] Admissions Admission to the McCombs School at both the undergraduate and graduate level is highly competitive.[19] In Fall 2012, out of the 7,122 freshman applicants, only 1,403 were admitted to the undergraduate program.[20] Unlike most colleges & schools at The University of Texas at Austin and the university itself, McCombs does not accept spring or summer applications. Prospective students must apply for admission only during the fall semester.[19] Both undergraduate and postgraduate applicants have similar admissions requirements. Applicants are evaluated based on multiple letters of recommendation, essays, transcripts, and a resume.[21] MBA applicants however are encouraged to have at least two years of fulltime work experience and are required to take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).[22] For Fall 2012, the McCombs school received just under 2,000 applications for the Full-Time MBA program, with an acceptance rate of 29%. Admission to the Full-time MBA program - Key Admission Stats: (class of 2014)[23]

Organization The McCombs School of Business awards the degrees of Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master in Professional Accounting (MPA), Master of Science in Finance (MSF), Master of Science in Technology Commercialization (MSTC), Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD), as well as certificates upon completion of nondegreed Executive Education programs.[24] A program offering the Master of Science in Business Analytics is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2013. Programs awarding doctoral degrees at the McCombs School of Business are divided in five academic departments, Accounting, Finance, Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM), Management, and Marketing.[24] A sixth department, Business, Government and Society, was created in 2010 and does not award a doctoral degree. Alumni Graduates from McCombs receive competitive salaries and are solicited by some of the best companies in the world. In addition, a huge advantage that McCombs graduates have is the fact that Texas has so many companies based in the state, as well as large regional offices of those based elsewhere. Given these companies look to hire MBAs regionally (for example, Oil & Gas Investment Banking Divisions), their first choice is naturally to recruit from the McCombs School of Business which, in turn, insulates McCombs graduates from the job market that other graduates are facing in markets where there is more concentration of top business schools (for example, New York). Furthermore, despite the recent economic downturn, McCombs has continued to maintain a very high job placement for it's graduates due to the booming Texas job market. Top recruiters at McCombs historically include PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, KPMG, JP Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Dell, Citigroup, Boston Consulting Group, Microsoft, Chevron, and BP.[84] Alumni of the business school include Southwest Airlines CEO Gary C. Kelly '74,[85] Heinz CEO William R. Johnson '74,[86] former Texas Rangers owner Thomas O. Hicks '68,[87] and ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva '68 & '69.[88] The school's namesake, Red McCombs, also attended the business school, going on to co-found Clear Channel Communications and coown the San Antonio Spurs, the Denver Nuggets, and the Minnesota Vikings.[89] Donald Evans '73, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, earned his MBA at McCombs.[90] Faculty As of the 20112012 school year, the McCombs School employs 186 full-time equivalent faculty and currently maintains a student-faculty ratio of 29:1.[16] McCombs is headed by Dr. Thomas W. Gilligan who took over as dean in 2008 when George W. Gau stepped down after six years in the previous position.[91] Prior to joining the McCombs School, Gilligan held a variety of positions at the University of Southern California from 1987 until 2008.[92]