“McCombs does not require its students to officially declare a major; instead, it offers 19 optional concentrations, spread across a few larger categories, which allow students to gain a deeper familiarity with their target career path. In addition to completing the core curriculum, interested students must also fulfill requirements specific to each concentration they intend to complete. A student who plans to pursue a concentration in Risk Management, for instance, is required to take at least five courses in that field for a total of 15 credit hours.

“Concentrations range from relatively broad disciplines, such as Management or Accounting, to narrowly defined courses of study designed to position students for employment opportunities within a particular field. For example, while a student interested in the general Finance concentration must complete seven courses, or 20 credit hours, which can be drawn from almost any of the department’s offerings, one who hopes to concentrate in Energy Finance must enroll in a largely prescribed progression of six finance and accounting courses for a total of 17 credit hours. The four interdisciplinary concentrations – Entrepreneurship, Global Business, Social Enterprise and CleanTech – each enable students to take courses from a variety of departments, both within McCombs and at other graduate schools within UT Austin, in pursuit of wide-ranging academic goals.”

To read more about the school’s curriculum, as well as to obtain in-depth program information, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs! All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

If you are in the midst of preparing for Round 1 admissions interview, don’t be caught without the Clear Admit Interview Guides!   These informative resources, based on our years of MBA admissions experience and our work with hundreds of applicants interviewing at leading programs, provide school-specific insight and strategic advice to help applicants ace their admissions interviews.  By reading these guides, you’ll learn what to expect on interview day and how to craft effective responses to school-specific and commonly asked questions.  Each Clear Admit Interview Guide includes:

The Kenan-Flagler, McCombs and McDonough Interview Guides are available for immediate download in the Clear Admit Shop. Add the Kenan-Flagler, McCombs or McDonough School Guide to your order of an Interview Guide to receive a 10% bundle discount!

“Founded in 1999 by a first-year McCombs student seeking to make inroads into the extremely competitive venture capital industry, the Venture Fellows (VF) program extends the school’s venture capital curriculum by providing hands-on internship opportunities with top funds in the industry. The Venture Fellows exist as an organization independent of the McCombs MBA program, sourcing their own funds and working to foster communication between Texan venture capitalists and interested students. Each year, between 80 and 100 first-year students apply for one of the program’s 20 spots; interested parties must submit an application, cover letter and resume in order to be considered, and must additionally conduct a face-to-face interview and submit a two-page analysis of an assigned business case in the later stages of the application process.

“The VF program requires a two-semester commitment, from the spring semester of a student’s first year through the end of their second-year fall semester. During both of these semesters, in addition to completing their coursework, Venture Fellows intern for approximately ten hours per week with a partner firm in the venture capital industry. Internship placement is determined by matching the student’s current skills and future goals with the project needs of participating firms.

“In addition to meeting the required minimum number of work hours, interns are strongly encouraged to become more involved with their host company and contribute materially to their employer’s bottom line. In the past, fellows have contributed to their firms by raising funds, developing marketing plans and assisting with due diligence. At the end of each semester, interns receive letter grades for their work, which are largely determined by the firm’s estimation of the student’s ability to add value to their organization.”

To read more about the venture capital experience provided at McCombs, as well as to obtain in-depth program and curriculum information, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs! All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

1. Describe how your professional and personal experiences have led you to pursue an MBA at this time. Please share with us your short and long term goals and why the Texas MBA at McCombs is the program best positioned to help you achieve them. (Limit: 900 words) While most admissions committees are interested in the professional reasons behind applicants’ decisions to apply to business school and the motivations regarding timing, the fact that McCombs specifically asks about personal experiences shows that candidates will need to expand their essay to include non-professional experiences that have influenced their future goals.

One approach to this topic would be for candidates to summarize what they’ve done thus far in their career and personal life that have led them to define their career goals.  Then they can explain their future plans and demonstrate why an MBA is necessary to move forward. While that approach does place this question into the career goals essay category, it’s important to keep in mind that the McCombs adcom is most interested in the candidate’s assessment of their personal and professional experiences and the reasons that a turning point has been reached.  Therefore as you write about your professional and personal experiences, you should tie this discussion back to your greater professional goals.

Discussing how the Texas MBA fits into the picture will be key, and you can touch on how the McCombs program will provide you with the skill set necessary to begin reaching your objectives.  Taking the time to learn about the school’s special programs and extracurricular activities – whether through a visit to campus, conversation with alumni or reading the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs School of Business – will pay dividends here. 2. At the McCombs School of Business, we are proud to have an active and diverse student community. What do you consider to be your personal strengths and how have you leveraged them in the past to enrich your work and non-work communities? (Limit: 500 words) Maintaining its position as an application essay for three years in a row, this prompt, which was altered slightly this year, signals the value that McCombs places on student contribution and involvement on campus.  This year, applicants are asked specifically to comment on how they have leveraged their personal strengths in the past to enrich the communities of which they are members.  A strong essay would be one that touches on several qualities . . . → Continue Reading]]> We wanted to take some time today to comment on the UT Austin – McCombs essay topics for the 2011-2012 admissions season, which differ slightly from last year’s three required questions.  The most conspicuous change this year is the removal of the leadership development essay.  Reflecting an emphasis on applicants who have contributed to their workplace and the community (and who will continue this level of personal engagement in an MBA program), UT Austin’s two questions focus on how candidates would enrich their environments through leadership commitment.

1. Describe how your professional and personal experiences have led you to pursue an MBA at this time. Please share with us your short and long term goals and why the Texas MBA at McCombs is the program best positioned to help you achieve them. (Limit: 900 words)
While most admissions committees are interested in the professional reasons behind applicants’ decisions to apply to business school and the motivations regarding timing, the fact that McCombs specifically asks about personal experiences shows that candidates will need to expand their essay to include non-professional experiences that have influenced their future goals.

One approach to this topic would be for candidates to summarize what they’ve done thus far in their career and personal life that have led them to define their career goals.  Then they can explain their future plans and demonstrate why an MBA is necessary to move forward. While that approach does place this question into the career goals essay category, it’s important to keep in mind that the McCombs adcom is most interested in the candidate’s assessment of their personal and professional experiences and the reasons that a turning point has been reached.  Therefore as you write about your professional and personal experiences, you should tie this discussion back to your greater professional goals.

Discussing how the Texas MBA fits into the picture will be key, and you can touch on how the McCombs program will provide you with the skill set necessary to begin reaching your objectives.  Taking the time to learn about the school’s special programs and extracurricular activities – whether through a visit to campus, conversation with alumni or reading the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs School of Business – will pay dividends here.

2. At the McCombs School of Business, we are proud to have an active and diverse student community. What do you consider to be your personal strengths and how have you leveraged them in the past to enrich your work and non-work communities? (Limit: 500 words)
Maintaining its position as an application essay for three years in a row, this prompt, which was altered slightly this year, signals the value that McCombs places on student contribution and involvement on campus.  This year, applicants are asked specifically to comment on how they have leveraged their personal strengths in the past to enrich the communities of which they are members.  A strong essay would be one that touches on several qualities and involvements, illustrating a range of skills and their applicability to the MBA program.  That said, though this prompt invites a rather broad discussion, anecdotal evidence of your positive traits in action is essential.  For that reason, it will makes sense to hone in on 3 or 4 examples, linking each to some similar activity or contribution you could make to the classroom or an on-campus club.  Indicating what clubs, organizations, or programs you hope to participate in and how you will take on a leading role will go far in demonstrating your enthusiasm for and commitment to the program.

Required Essays

1. Describe how your professional and personal experiences have led you to pursue an MBA at this time. Please share with us your short and long term goals and why the Texas MBA at McCombs is the program best positioned to help you achieve them. Limit: 900 words

2. At the McCombs School of Business, we are proud to have an active and diverse student community. What do you consider to be your personal strengths and how have you leveraged them in the past to enrich your work and non-work communities? Limit: 500 words

Optional Essays

If your standardized test scores are low or if you have not had coursework in core business subjects (i.e. calculus, microeconomics, statistics, financial accounting), please tell us how you plan to prepare yourself for the quantitative rigor of the MBA curriculum. Limit: 200 words

Please provide any additional information to the Admissions Committee that you believe is important and/or will address any areas of concern that will be beneficial to the committee in considering your application. Limit: 350 words

For more information, visit McCombs’ admissions website.

“The AIM Investment Center, created through an endowment provided by AIM Management Group co-founders Gary Crum and Bob Graham, provides students with the resources to gain an experiential perspective on investment management. The center’s EDS Financial Trading and Technology Center, founded by former dean George Gau and sponsored by technology services company Electronic Data Systems, includes an accurate recreation of a Wall Street trading room complete with real-time stock quotes and cutting-edge telecommunications systems – a resource which enables finance professors to incorporate the latest technology into their courses. The center also provides office space for the members of the MBA Investment Fund to manage their three multi-million-dollar investment portfolios.

Run out of the AIM Investment Center, the MBA Investment Fund was the first-ever legally constituted, student-managed private investment fund to be established at any business school. The limited liability company, founded in 1994 by George W. Gau, has a clientele of over 60 investors and, as of September 2008, had increased its initial $1.6 million investment to over $13 million. The fund provides three investment products: an endowment portfolio, a growth-oriented equity portfolio and a value-oriented equity portfolio. The growth- and value-oriented portfolios are geared toward benefiting individual and corporate clients, while the endowment portfolio focuses on supporting the AIM Investment Center itself.

Because of natural student turnover, the AIM Investment Center has appointed two overseers, Dr. Laura Starks and Sanford Leeds, to provide continuity within the fund’s management team. Leeds and Starks choose no more than 20 students to join the MBA Investment Fund each year based on a competitive application process. These students become fund managers who take charge of most activity within the fund’s three portfolios, working in conjunction with investment counselors to determine the best courses of action for each portfolio.

The student managers work under the guidance of five investment counselors, each of whom specializes in a different area of expertise, such as Telecommunications, Industrials or Healthcare.  These counselors, who hail from leading companies such as Morgan Stanley and AIM Investments, are chosen by the fund board and do not receive compensation for their participation with the company. Though students take an active role in shaping the financial structure of each portfolio, counselors can veto any student investment suggestion they feel will harm or hamper the overall profitability of the portfolio in question. In addition to consulting with Starks, Leeds and the five investment counselors, students are also required to discuss their decisions with an advisory board made up of finance department faculty members and leaders within the investment management industry.”

To read more about the AIM Investment Center, as . . . → Continue Reading]]> The focus of this week’s column in the Trivia Tuesday series, in which we cover information about the unique program elements that differentiate the leading MBA programs from their peers, is the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Today we’re sharing a passage from the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs that describes the school’s AIM Investment Center.

“The AIM Investment Center, created through an endowment provided by AIM Management Group co-founders Gary Crum and Bob Graham, provides students with the resources to gain an experiential perspective on investment management. The center’s EDS Financial Trading and Technology Center, founded by former dean George Gau and sponsored by technology services company Electronic Data Systems, includes an accurate recreation of a Wall Street trading room complete with real-time stock quotes and cutting-edge telecommunications systems – a resource which enables finance professors to incorporate the latest technology into their courses. The center also provides office space for the members of the MBA Investment Fund to manage their three multi-million-dollar investment portfolios.

Run out of the AIM Investment Center, the MBA Investment Fund was the first-ever legally constituted, student-managed private investment fund to be established at any business school. The limited liability company, founded in 1994 by George W. Gau, has a clientele of over 60 investors and, as of September 2008, had increased its initial $1.6 million investment to over $13 million. The fund provides three investment products: an endowment portfolio, a growth-oriented equity portfolio and a value-oriented equity portfolio. The growth- and value-oriented portfolios are geared toward benefiting individual and corporate clients, while the endowment portfolio focuses on supporting the AIM Investment Center itself.

Because of natural student turnover, the AIM Investment Center has appointed two overseers, Dr. Laura Starks and Sanford Leeds, to provide continuity within the fund’s management team. Leeds and Starks choose no more than 20 students to join the MBA Investment Fund each year based on a competitive application process. These students become fund managers who take charge of most activity within the fund’s three portfolios, working in conjunction with investment counselors to determine the best courses of action for each portfolio.

The student managers work under the guidance of five investment counselors, each of whom specializes in a different area of expertise, such as Telecommunications, Industrials or Healthcare.  These counselors, who hail from leading companies such as Morgan Stanley and AIM Investments, are chosen by the fund board and do not receive compensation for their participation with the company. Though students take an active role in shaping the financial structure of each portfolio, counselors can veto any student investment suggestion they feel will harm or hamper the overall profitability of the portfolio in question. In addition to consulting with Starks, Leeds and the five investment counselors, students are also required to discuss their decisions with an advisory board made up of finance department faculty members and leaders within the investment management industry.”

To read more about the AIM Investment Center, as well as to obtain in-depth program and curriculum information, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs! All 21 Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

All of the 2011-2012 editions feature the most current information from the programs, including the latest admissions guidelines, class demographics and placement statistics, and offer insight into year-over-year trends. This year, our guides include more student quotes, new content about school-specific special programs, exclusive Q&As with admissions directors and career services directors, and Clear Admit’s analysis of essay topics.

Applauded by admissions officers and applicants alike, the Clear Admit School Guides are informative and detailed profiles of leading business schools that combine the views of faculty, students, alumni and the popular press. Our guides are available for immediate download in PDF format to help you meet your tight time constraints.

The Clear Admit School Guides will help you to:

New titles for international and U.S. MBA programs are slated for release later this summer, so stay tuned for more details!

To purchase the updated and improved Clear Admit School Guides, visit the Clear Admit Shop.

Round 1 Deadline: October 24, 2011 Notification: Week of December 19, 2011

Round 2 Deadline: December 5, 2011 Notification: Week of February 20, 2012

Round 3 Deadline: January 23, 2012 Notification: Week of April 9, 2012

Round 4 Deadline: March 26, 2012 Notification: Week of May 14, 2012

The essay topics and online application for McCombs will be released in August. For more information, visit McCombs’ admissions website.

Today, we’re taking a peek into the Clear Admit School Guide to the McCombs School of Business to share with you a passage about the school’s IC2 Institute, which provides opportunities for interdisciplinary research pertinent to the MBA curriculum.

“The IC2 Institute, an interdisciplinary research unit at the University of Texas at Austin, works to confirm and extend theories of entrepreneurial wealth creation by conducting real-life tests on businesses that opt to participate. IC2, which stands for “innovation, creativity and capital,” conducts its research through three principal subsidiaries: the Austin Technology Incubator, the Global Commercialization Group and the Bureau of Business Research.

“For McCombs MBA students, the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) may be the most immediately useful component of IC2. The ATI is designed to give participating technological entrepreneurs, including McCombs MBA students and graduates, the finances and facilities they need to develop their start-up enterprises. “It also offers ten to fifteen internships per year, which are open to MBA students and particularly motivated undergraduates alike. By working directly with technological entrepreneurs and members of the ATI staff, interns develop a deeper understanding of how to commercialize new technology, and they also build and strengthen their own professional networks. The incubator also serves as a resource for entrepreneurship-related class projects, providing experiential opportunities in consulting and venture capital for students enrolled in certain courses at McCombs.”

To read more about the other branches of the IC2 and their pertinence to MBA students, as well as to obtain in-depth program information, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to McCombs! All 21 Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

“Interviewer was vaguely familiar with my resume, but didn’t seem to have read my essays or application.

Overall interview was very friendly and relaxed, in a very plain room with nothing on the walls at all. Lasted 45 minutes, and went fast.”

To see more MBA admissions interview reports, check out the Clear Admit Wiki – a free resource with hundreds of real, documented interview experiences from b-school applicants. Also, if you’d like to help your fellow applicants by adding your experiences, please send us your interview field report and we’ll post it to the wiki. Finally, if you’d like even more helpful hints and detailed analysis on how to ace your interview, check out our line of Interview Guides, which demystify the most common questions asked by the leading programs and offer step-by-step guidance for a successful interview.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the Clear Admit Wiki and best of luck to those still undergoing admissions interviews!