The University of Texas at Austin

I am a student at UT's Continuing Education Program for Data Science. I was completely ripped off. There are no refunds for this $6000 certification program. The program is run by a company called XTOL with UT's name slapped across it. They claimed that I would be assigned a mentor and placed in a small group with whom I would be working closely. They did not reveal that there were only 3 mentors assigned to over 40 students and that 'working together' meant that everyone shares a single slack channel.... Read More There is no career counseling or support. They constantly cancel our team meetings and I have had my emails to the instructor ignored for weeks, I have not gotten any mentor feedback or instructor feedback on my work submitted in over a month, and the instructional resources are cobbled together from Medium.com articles. The UT continuing education program is a complete scam. I am unable to find any review sites with customer reports about this program. There is no clear escalation path for complaints, just more emails being ignored by the mentors. DO NOT SPEND $6000 ON THIS PROGRAM OR ANY OTHER CPE PROGRAM AT UT.

The University of Texas at Austin, specifically the McCombs School of Business are both amazing. Austin is a great city to spend 4 years in and I loved that the campus was right in the heart of so much fun. The University of Texas has so many opportunities to find your place that it can be overwhelming at first, but once you find your solid groups it makes college better. I recommend taking the time to find clubs and groups that fit for you- do not force it but instead keep looking. While I made... Read More friends initially it did take me longer to get that solid friend group since I was one of the few students not from Texas. It can be hard to break into groups that are all high school friends or when you miss out on activities because every goes back to the same hometown on the weekend. It can take time, but worth it when you find your people. The program is very rigorous, but there can be some amazing professors. It was also quite a shock attending classes with hundreds of students- my entire high school was the size of some of these classes! That is when you need to be especially sure you make friends in class and get to know the professor and TAs at office hours so you do not get lost. Id recommend taking a couple core classes at community college during winter/summer break. Certain classes can be very time consuming so it can help with workload balance during the semesters. This is especially helpful if you are short on time trying to receive a major and a minor or had a delay with declaring. A McCombs degree goes a long way with recruiters since it is so highly valued and respected. The emphasis on recruiting resources and career services are great. The business school understands the goal is to get a great job after graduation and they bring lots of companies to campus giving plenty of opportunities to connect for internships and jobs. The University of Texas and McCombs have such fantastic reputations that people are always impressed. It is also the best to have such a huge network- Longhorns always help Longhorns and since there are so many of us you are likely able to find one another.