Many of my fellow graduates are unemployed, as I am. The relationships between the nation's premier companies and the school are shaky at best. Career services is basically a joke. The school's degree is really not as respected as they want you to think.

Bottom line: If you want to spend lots of money and go nowhere, go to McCombs. If you want to actually do anything with your career, go somewhere else.

cmon its not McCombs!! its the bad job market in general

Wrong. It's the market, full stop.

that's true - the current economical situation has, and will have a considerable influence on the job market in the next few years(especially in the USA), and i think we all have to come in terms with it!

Sorry for being so bleak, but this is really the way things are.

Andy

I suppose the other thing is that the more graduates there are in the job market, the smaller the chances of finding employment. Sure, an MBA should improve one's situation, but who knows - with the ever-increasing number of MBA grads out there, I suspect that more and more employers will be looking for professional experience and personal qualities which mark one candidate out from another. To take one, admittedly not MBA specific example, its well known that if you want to get into Oxford or Cambridge as an undergraduate, simply having three A's at A-level isn't enough. Even 5 A's may not make you sufficiently distinguishable from the competition. This is partly why Oxbridge interviews frequently throw up so many seemingly "bizarre" questions - its one way to draw out the creativity and thinking capacities of the interviewee. I wonder if something similar is going on now, or will do, in the world of MBA applications. Either way, given today's economic circumstances, and given that we have no idea how long the situation will go on for or whether it will get better or worse, perhaps now is the ideal time for anyone thinking about doing an MBA in the next couple of years to work on their "creative" portfolio - by which I mean develop interests and areas of expertise, or gain work experience, other candidates won't have, but which might yet be or relevance or have transferrable applications in the future.

Just a thought.

Lukeh posted:

"I suppose the other thing is that the more graduates there are in the job market, the smaller the chances of finding employment."

A similar thing happened here(Israel) with lawyers - it became very popular to be one, and they where coming out of schools by the thousands(they had to make the yearly bar entrance ceremony in a stadium!). at the end, the great NR of lawyers all around really made it hard to find a job as one.(and made the wages lower)

It seems that MBA is going that way also.....

O.H

I suppose one possible outcome - and one which has arguable already happened - is that the MBA system will become increasingly stratified. We already know that some MBAs are worth more than others, both figuratively and literally, and that is, in a sense, as it should be (although I worry that in their haste to get an MBA, any MBA, a lot of people will waste a lot of money on a fairly worthless qualification). One other concern is that in order to put, as a former English politician once put it, "clear blue water" between themselves and the competition, sucessfull, high-profile institutions will charge even more than they already do. I find it ironic that at a time when education is commonly recognised as something we all have a right to, and when governments everywhere are supposedly trying to make education at all levels more open and inclusive, increasingly only those with very large bank accounts can afford to go to top schools. Maybe its time b-schools started to offer more generous scholarship packages they currently do. Either way, whenever education gets talked about as being a market place like any other, my heart sinks.

My purpose in writing this post was to disseminate the knowledge that can't be learned by reading a brochure or visiting the campus. In today's world, an MBA is both expensive and time-consuming--and with the level of competition that exists today, it is utterly important to attend the program that will help you achieve your goals.

I am just trying to give people the honest facts. UT's MBA program is so busy patting itself on the back that it fails to realize its own shortcomings and weaknesses and thus neglects to do anything about them. Its complacency is almost deceptive to a newly enrolled student.

As I said, the bottom line is that if you can get into McCombs, you can get into a better program--one that will actually help you get a career and not just merely take your money.

Um... I think the discussion has moved on a little. UT = BAD (in your opinion). 'nuff said.

Hi anti_mccoms,

I dont know whether you are visiting these board posts or not. I was just planning for applying to McCombs. What is the present situation? Would you like to shed some light?