This past October, the Graduate Marketing Network at Texas McCombs hosted their annual Marketing Trek with the MBA Career Management team. 19 first-year students traveled to New York City and visited the offices of Samsung, Google, Pinterest, Adobe, and ZX Ventures!

Career Treks give Full-Time MBAs the opportunity to learn about their industry to become more familiar with the culture of the companies in a real-world context. The companies provide presentations, Q&A sessions, and opportunities to network with alumni and executive management.

MBA students take New York

New York City holds many business opportunities in hundreds of different markets. We caught up with MBA ’20 students Alicia Mercolino, Xingpin Liu, and Saransh Gupta to hear about their experiences and takeaways from the trek–  Saransh is drawn to the city for tech, Xingpin for marketing opportunities, and Alicia wanted to explore the options with a goal to move to NYC in the future.

“My goal is to move back to New York with a full-time offer in hand. I was interested in learning more about and meeting people at companies with MBA opportunities and McCombs alumni.” – Alicia Mercolino

Positive Impact

Texas McCombs students share a determination to leave any environment better than they found it. Touring various companies and learning about how they could add to and impact the environment is a great benefit for students. Saransh said that he caught a glimpse of what it would be like to work in New York City and was able to better understand the marketing function in technology companies. Alicia appreciated the “in-person” feel.

The most impactful part of the trip was getting an in-person feel for each company’s culture, something invaluable but hard to judge based on perusing websites or conducting phone chats alone. I lived in New York for a number of years and never knew some of these offices existed!” – Alicia Mercolino

MBA students visit Google

The visit to Google was Xingpin’s favorite company to tour because it had everything she was looking for. It was expansive and in a good location with a great view.

MBA students visit Adobe

Adobe was also a favorite of Xingpin and Saransh for the office culture and hospitality of the hosts.

“The Google tour was most impactful. It opened another dimension of thinking and managing for me. But from a career aspect, I would say Adobe showed the greatest effort. They wanted us to know Adobe and to help us.” – Xingpin Liu

For Alicia, her favorite company was ZX Ventures.

MBA students learn about ZX Ventures.

My favorite company to tour was ZX Ventures, the global incubator and venture capital team funded by Anheuser-Busch InBev. I’m not necessarily interested in pursuing the industry opportunities but it was very interesting to learn about what they are doing.” – Alicia Mercolino 

Main Takeaways

Students not only learned about the companies inner-workings but also about the culture and the office environment.

“Companies are similar when you see them from a distance, but every one is different when you walk closer. The culture, the work place, the people– they are all marked by the company. So taking the opportunity to learn about it prepares you for the challenges.” – Xingpin Liu

Students like Alicia are also given the chance to evaluate each company and see which setting is a match for them.

My main takeaway from this experience was that certain companies which I originally thought might be a good fit, might not necessarily be so. It was valuable to have face time with NYC companies.” – Alicia Mercolino 

“This is a good opportunity for people to build relationships with tech companies in New York and opens up a new geography for students to work in after school.” – Saransh Gupta

Taking time to re-examine your career path through the treks adds another layer of advantage in that one is able to communicate a vision in person to possible future employers or future colleagues who could vouch for them during application processes.” – Alicia Mercolino 

To future students considering Texas McCombs:

“Texas McCombs and the MBA experience in general is a very unique one. As a ‘non-traditional’ business student, I have had to make a concerted effort to connect with people in the Austin community as well as to keep in touch with my NYC network. I would wholeheartedly recommend McCombs to prospective students. I would recommend that prospective students be realistic about how much additional work they will have to put in for off-campus recruiting if they are looking to move into a different area or market.” – Alicia Mercolino 

“Job searching can be stressful but faculty is wonderful, and peers are helpful. ” – Xingpin Liu

“McCombs is a highly collaborative school where people never wish to exceed at the expense of others.” – Saransh Gupta


Visit Texas McCombs MBA  to find out more about all our programs, events and community, or join the #WhyMcCombs conversation on Twitter.  Hook ’em!