UT Austin vs. Fordham: Which School Offers Better Business Networking Opportunities?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that UT Austin offers a larger, deeply connected business network with especially strong reach across Texas, while Fordham places students in New York City, where they can pursue semester-time internships and in-person industry events more easily. UT’s McCombs School of Business has extensive alumni and employer relationships in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and beyond, with notable access to technology, energy, consulting, finance, real estate, and entrepreneurship. Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business benefits from its New York location and proximity to finance, media, marketing, accounting, and corporate headquarters.

At UT Austin, the scale of the McCombs alumni base and the school’s structured recruiting ecosystem are major advantages. Students can connect through career fairs, alumni programs, student organizations, and Austin’s fast-growing startup and technology scene. The network is particularly valuable for someone who may want to build a career in Texas or the broader Southwest.

Fordham’s strongest networking advantage is immediacy. Its Rose Hill campus is in the Bronx, and its Lincoln Center campus is in Manhattan; either location can make informational interviews, speaker events, and part-time internships in New York more realistic during the academic year. That can be especially useful for students targeting investment banking, asset management, advertising, fashion business, media, or other fields concentrated in the city. Students still need to be proactive, since New York opportunities are abundant but competition for them is intense.