First Semester at McCombs – My Top Ten

Posted on December 26, 2009 by dirk hallen

As I write this on the plane heading home to California for Winter Break, it is hard for me to believe that the first semester is behind me. Although nearly 5 months have passed by, it seems like just yesterday that I was pulling in to Austin, anxious to start this MBA journey.

Despite my high expectations, I had no idea what an amazing experience this would be on so many levels. Since writing something of substance is proving difficult, I thought a recap in Top Ten form would work (after all, I’m on vacation and need to get back to watching football and reading Super Freakonomics.)

So without further ado, here are my Top Ten Favorite Things about McCombs:

1. Austin is Amazing – Where else can you find the opportunity, culture, entertainment and recreation that you find here in ATX? The first thing you’ll notice is that the people couldn’t be friendlier, even if you have California license plates like I do. Not to mention the weather; I’ll take the sun of Texas over the snow of the Northeast any day.

2. My Peers Constantly Impress Me – Walking in the first day of Orientation, I was immediately impressed by the group of people surrounding me. Whether it is co-owning one of Austin’s best restaurants (Lambert’s), competing in the Olympics, or giving up a job in investment banking to join Teach for America, I feel lucky to call myself their classmates. Additionally, the way in which my classmates are willing to support each other is truly remarkable. The week before finals, I left all my Macroeconomics notes from the quarter on a plane on my way back from my PLUS project presentation. Within hours of posting my frustration on Facebook, I had 10 different students, some of whom I don’t even have classes with, offer to help recover the information. To me, this incident really sums up the culture at McCombs and why it is such a unique place.

3. The Music – No matter what you are interested in, Austin has it. Austin City Limits in the Fall and South by Southwest in the Spring are amazing but there are great options every night. A few of the concerts my peers and I have enjoyed include: Phoenix, Method Man, Pat Green, Jay Z, Black Crowes, Robert Earl Keen and a host of great local acts like Dan Dyer, Bob Schneider and The Gourds.

4. Opportunity is All Around – As a member of Venture Fellows, I will have the privilege of interning at one of our partner Venture Capital or Private Equity firms in town this Spring and next Fall. This opportunity is fairly unique to our program due to the entrepreneurial nature of Austin and the proximity of VC & PE firms in the area. Many of my peers are starting companies in classes like New Venture Creation while others are ramping up for upcoming case interviews with top consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain and BCG. Still others are building the strength of our Clean Tech curriculum, ensuring McCombs is the leading MBA program for all forms of energy.

5. The Strength of the Network – Due to the commitment and pride UT grads (affectionately known as Orangebloods) have for their alma mater, the Texas Alumni network is tremendously valuable. While reaching out to McCombs alumni is always a great starting point, it does not stop there. UT alums from all the Universities’ great programs are always eager to help a fellow Longhorn (even if you did spend your undergrad years at OU.)

6. The Food – Tacos are a staple of Austin cuisine, even for breakfast (they sell them in our cafeteria). The BBQ is unreal and the queso cannot be beat. Somehow, they have even managed to figure out sushi as well. Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t give some credit to Whole Foods (the 80K sf flagship store is located underneath the Whole Foods corporate headquarters and serves as my cafeteria numerous nights a week).

7. Supportive Leadership – The fact that both Dean Gilligan and Dean Hirst still teach classes in the first year core says a lot about how connected the leadership of McCombs is to the students. Additionally, the program office staff couldn’t be more supportive or more committed to our success. Whether it is Cindy Benton at Student Services, Stacey Rudnick at Career Services or Jeremy Wells at Financial Aid, we are lucky to have such a great group of professionals behind us.

8. The Nightlife – It doesn’t get any better than Austin! There is something for everyone on any given night. You have to see it to believe it. I will leave it at that.

9. A First Class Faculty – When I talk about a first class faculty, you will naturally assume I am talking about credentials and that is indeed a part of it. Whether it is my econ professor who worked as an economic advisor to the White House or my Operations teacher who spent the last few years working with Shell Oil to implement their Global Leadership program, all of our professors have the pedigree one expects from an elite program. In addition to their impressive resumes, they are also first class people.

Sandy Leeds Appreciation Day with Cohort Uno

Whether it is welcoming students to their homes for a faculty dinner, arranging a make-up quiz because a student has a bad case of the flu (I’m still convinced I had the Swine Flu) or providing career advice, they never stop supporting us (or making us laugh…usually at their expense. See the picture above where our whole Cohort dressed up like our Finance teacher, Sandy Leeds, on the last day of class.)

10. Longhorn Athletics – MBA Tailgates, Basketball Games, the Red River Shootout in Dallas, it is always good to be a Longhorn. Many of my classmates don’t care about sports (I don’t understand them either) but I think they would all agree that these experiences bring us together as a program and a class. Our professors, alumni, recruiters and even the Dean are frequent attendees to all these events. Since starting the program in August, I have yet to experience defeat in either football or basketball (both teams are #2 in the nation). Hopefully, this trend continues!

Hope you all have a Happy Holidays and a great New Year! Good luck to all of you working on those applications. Make sure to tune in to the BCS National Championship on January 7^th so you can see my classmates and I rooting on the Longhorns from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Until next time…Hook Em!

Dallas Consulting Trek

Posted on December 7, 2009 by leslie phillips

On a clear, sunny Friday in mid-November, a group of 35 MBA students descended upon the unsuspecting city of Dallas, Texas. We arrived by car and by plane, dressed in suits, ties or skirts and crashed with family, friends or at bargain hotels. Our mission: to visit and network with four management consulting firms before close of business. It was the Dallas Consulting Trek, and it was a success!

Can you find bloggers Dirk, Kevin or me?

McCombs has various industry treks throughout the year. Students generally arrange their own accommodations and transportation to/from the city – otherwise the treks are organized by the Career Services Center, who contact and arrange visits with (typically) Fortune 500 companies. Earlier this year Ryan led the Wall Street Trek in NYC. Around the same time a group of marketing students flew to Chicago to visit CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies. Over winter break we’ll have a trek to San Francisco to visit various technology/financial firms. The treks are meant to give students the opportunity to learn more about the industries in which they are interested and to visit new cities.

Directly after class on Thursday a friend and I hit the road for Dallas. The drive from Austin is roughly three hours, and we arrived just in time to grab Vietnamese food before the first event, a happy hour sponsored by Price Waterhouse Coopers. (PwC has a consulting branch for the industries to which it provides tax/audit services.) While we have a relatively small MBA program (265 students in the class of 2011), McCombs alumni include MBAs and BBAs, making it a pretty extensive network. At the PwC event we had the opportunity to chat with a former McCombs MBA and BBA who now work for PwC. The live swans (apparently the trademark of the of the Embassy Suites Hotels) swimming in the indoor hotel pond provided an interesting backdrop!

The management consulting firm lineup for Friday included A.T. Kearney, Booz Inc., Deloitte Consulting and Bain & Co. Each firm provided a brief presentation, Q&A sessions, a chance to mingle and, last but not least, snacks. The trek was a great way for us who are interested in a particular firm, or even the industry, to get a feel for the company culture and if we can actually picture ourselves working there. By meeting with the firms we also have the chance to learn about the firms’ current developments and projects – knowledge which is great to discuss during an interview. As the sun started to set on Friday we were just entering the doors of the last company. And I must give credit to my fellow MBAs, who, despite the long day, maintained great level of energy and enthusiastically asked questions until the very end. For those interested in a certain industry I recommend participating in at least one trek – it’s a great way to get involved in company research and the job search.

3 Day Start Up

Posted on November 21, 2009 by kalin mckenna

There is no doubt that one of the major selling points of the McCombs MBA is the location. Many of my fellow bloggers have discussed the awesomeness that is Austin, TX and they are entirely right, Austin is a fantastic place to spend two years. In addition to live music, great food, and gorgeous weather, Austin is full of entrepreneurs, and start up opportunities.

Last weekend I was able to participate in 3 Day Start Up, an event started by young entrepreneurs in the computer science department. The idea is simple enough: bring together forty minds that represent different industries and functions, lock them in the Austin Technology Incubator for a weekend, encourage them to pitch different start up ideas back and forth until four clear ideas emerge, and then watch them divvy up into teams to divide and conquer the steps necessary to build a company. I was one of the 10 lucky MBAs from McCombs selected to participate in this weekend. So what did participation entail besides giving up sleep for an entire weekend?

In the midst of one of my many pitches.

3 Day Start Up gave me the opportunity to sit in a room filled with brilliant minds from divergent backgrounds. While I am used to be surrounded by smart people with different skills and experiences (I do go to McCombs) I am not used to working on a project with a guy who can build a completely functional iPhone application over the course of three days, a girl whose passion for designing logos is only surpassed by her skill at doing it, and a kid who has been working in programming since the age of five. When I saw what these people were able to produce over the course of 60 hours it completely blew my mind. Fortunately for Josh (the other McCombs MBA on the project) and me the programmers were equally impressed by our ability to validate the project and pitch it to a panel of venture capitalists. It was truly a collaborative effort.

Following our pitch to the venture capitalists the entire crew reassembled to a elect a board of directors to manage the IP from the weekend and assist the teams in driving our innovations forward. Perhaps the most exciting aspect about the entire weekend is that out of the four companies that pitched, three of us are ready to move forward with our start ups. I could write about the weekend for ten more pages, but I think it is safe to say that the best thing you can do is come to McCombs and participate yourself!

Careers in Energy

Posted on November 15, 2009 by leslie phillips

While we have a wide range of career interests represented on the blog, I wanted to speak to an area that hasn’t yet come up but is very prevalent at McCombs – energy finance and clean technology. The energy crew in particular includes some of the most active and passionate students in the program. For this entry I’ll dive into what McCombs has offers in terms of careers in energy – if this is of interest to you, read-on. If not, ABORT!

Texas was recently ranked as the #2 cleantech state because of the large amount of venture capital invested in wind farm technology. With a large number of oil and gas companies headquartered in Houston, Houston is considered as the energy capital of the world. Austin is home to the nation’s first Green Energy Incubator, which facilities growth of young clean energy companies.

So, what is considered a niche at other MBA programs is very central at McCombs. The program offers a concentration in both energy finance and clean technology. The concentrations overlap with the energy-focused financial strategies class; otherwise students in energy finance focus on traditional finance and accounting methods, while the clean tech students take classes related to renewable energy, energy efficiency and emissions. Clean tech classes are offered through the B-school and also the School of Public Policy, Law and Environmental Science.

Academics are just the beginning. Officer elections for the Clean Tech Group and Energy Finance Group are some of the most intense and competitive elections among the student org.’s. Participation in a PLUS project is a great way for students to get hands-on experience in the energy industry: this semester we had multiple projects in renewable energy products, solar power, and carbon capture for firms like McKinsey & Company, HelioVolt and Parasol Renewable Energy. If that’s not enough, the Energy Finance Group holds their annual Energy Finance Case Challenge over several days in September.

While the list changes every year, oil and gas companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips regularly recruit at McCombs. Last summer, students from the class of 2011 also interned at companies such as MI Energy, Horizon Wind Energy, Venti Energy, and the Austin Technology Incubator. The government’s effort to subsidize new technologies might also promote investment, and, hopefully more jobs for students in the long-run. So, if you’re interested in learning more about the energy industry as an MBA, or considering the program to pursue a career in this field, there’s a lot to be excited about at McCombs!

Up for a Challenge?

Posted on November 3, 2009 by kevin burke

A couple of weeks ago Deloitte Consulting came to campus for their annual Consulting Case Challenge- one of the most highly anticipated challenges of the year. Twenty teams battled for the top prize, setting a new record for participation in the process. In addition to the overwhelming turnout of first-year students, Deloitte added a wrinkle to the competition by placing BBA Honors students on each team of MBA’s. This change expanded each team and added the additional dynamic of incorporating a younger team member that the vast majority of teams were meeting for the first time.

The competition also presented me with my first taste of the challenge environment. Earlier in the semester I had to back out of the Global Challenge due to a bout with the (non-swine) flu. I had high expectations entering the night and having survived 37 straight hours of academic induced adrenaline I can now confidently say that it was a tremendous experience all around.

The energy surrounding the kick-off of the challenge was palpable as representatives from Deloitte gave us the rundown of how the night and following morning would play out. Cases were distributed at 7:00 pm and the final deck outlining each team’s solution to the case was due at 7:30 am the following morning. There is no sleep. There is no rest. There is only caffeine, trail mix, battles with Powerpoint and the constant struggle to keep each other focused on putting together a coherent solution to a real business challenge. You really learn a lot about your fellow classmates by spending 12 hours together in a confined space, both good and bad. In my case the former drastically outweighed the latter as we were able to draw on each of our unique strengths in creating our presentation. We left my apartment a mess of storyboards and empty red bull containers confident that we had positioned ourselves for success once we stepped in front of the judges.

And then the waiting starts. The gap between leaving for campus and stepping into our designated cohort room for our first round presentation was nearly three hours. More than enough time to become even more fatigued, second guess your content and trip over your lines a few dozen times. I even had to walk out of our last “dry run” when, at 26 hours with no sleep, my brain and mouth refused to collaborate on an explanation of competitive forces.

But when the actual time to perform came our team came through. While we were not able to see any of the 4 other teams that we competed against in the first round, we left the room feeling as if we had presented ourselves well enough to advance. During lunch we found out that not only we had advanced to the final round, but also that team member Josh Thacker took home the Best Speaker Award for our section.

A couple of more walk-through’s and we were presenting to a now full-house of Deloitte judges and fellow students. The final presentation carried a new level of intensity as everyone knew how close to the finish we all were. We were the last group to present so unfortunately we did not get to watch any of the other, however by all accounts each team performed extremely well.

Ultimately we came up just short, finishing second in a tight vote. It was a strong finish and reinforced my desire to work in the consulting industry. It also generated a new level of respect for my classmates as I was immensely impressed with their ability to perform under such difficult conditions. Special shout out to fellow team member and McCombs blogger Kalin McKenna for her resounding performance opening and closing our arguments. And congratulations to fellow blogger, Dirk Hallen and the rest of the “After School Specials” for taking home first place. Last, but not least, thank you to Deloitte Consulting for continuing to support the McCombs School of Business and for putting on such a great event.

And if you have made it this far into this blog post, congratulations to you too, since you are probably as tired as I was after 37 hours.

Until next time.

Meet Bevo

Posted on November 3, 2009 by liz wetterhahn

If you are a loyal reader of this blog (all three of you), you may remember how bitter I was when I couldn’t attend last year’s Red River Rivalry (Texas vs. Oklahoma in Dallas) because of first year midterms. When the second years came back and raved about how amazing the game and the corresponding Texas State Fair were, I knew I’d make it my mission to attend this year. My fellow blogger Kalin described her fantastic experience, and I echo all of her sentiments about the game, the Fair and fried butter.

Although the entire weekend (and especially the State Fair) exceeded my expectations, nothing could top my experience prior to the game. My friend Jen interned in Dallas over the summer, and her coworker’s friend (an ex-Silver Spur) invited us to attend a party in Dallas on Thursday night where Bevo would be in attendance. If you don’t know of Bevo, he’s the live mascot that represents the University of Texas and stands on the football field during games (and is present at other important University events). I was so excited to meet him, and was thrilled as we walked up to the house and saw the Bevo-mobile parked up front (and Bevo standing on the front lawn). We took our picture with him (but avoided getting too close – those horns are BIG) and enjoyed the chatter of projected winners and point spreads for the weekend’s game. I felt like a true part of the University of Texas community, and felt that much more excited to see Bevo on the field during Saturday’s game. The game itself was close (and a little too nerve-wracking for my liking) but Texas prevailed, and we walked away with calmed nerves and increased hopes of a Rose Bowl appearance.

Bevo-mobile Bevo

I topped off my experience with the purchase of my first pair of authentic cowboy boots and all of the fried food I could eat (butter, smores, oreos, corn dogs and peanut butter and jelly!). I left Dallas with a full stomach (and clogged arteries!) and the satisfaction of both UT winning a huge game and having met the esteemed Bevo. It was another one of those fantastic McCombs weekends for the books – and an experience I wish I could replicate for years to come.

Texas State Fair

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Straight from the students