Trekking
Each year Cox MBA students venture beyond the DFW metroplex to interact with professionals working in their field of interest. The Cox Career Management Center organizes these expeditions and calls them “treks” for good reason — you travel to the heart of a city's finance, energy or marketing center and spend time in the trenches at several innovative companies. As you trek to Wall Street investment banks, the marketing departments of digital behemoths or global energy companies, you’ll see and hear firsthand how peer professionals and senior-level experts — many of whom are SMU Cox alums — meet challenges and strategize for success, and how they got where they are now. Along the way, you’ll have on-site meetings with corporate leaders. Treks are fertile ground for your future career prospects.
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The Wall Street Trek
There’s no better way to experience the real world of investment banking and wealth management than to take the trek to Wall Street. You’ll have face-to-face meetings with senior managers and Cox alumni at Cantor Fitzgerald/CCRE, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Morton Capital Management and other firms — an invaluable opening to land an internship. This trek is also an opportunity for Wall Street leaders to meet our exceptional students and learn more about SMU Cox — which translates to instant recognition when it appears on your resume. “It was great to see how far the SMU Cox name has spread,” Sean Davy (MBA' 16) says of the Wall Street trek.
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The Marketing Trek
Seeing how the lessons you learn in the classroom translate to the boardroom is one of the perks of the marketing trek. On visits to the corporate campuses and city offices of American Express, Amazon, Birchbox, ESPN, Google, LinkedIn and several others, you’ll engage with marketing department employees in a range of functions. The onsite visits to pioneering start-ups, as well as established companies, will help you identify which aspect of the industry excites you. As Richard Girson (MBA '15) says of his trek experience, “It was pivotal for my career choice to find out that analytics and big data were the two largest drivers for growth and strategy across all the businesses.” You'll also get tips from Cox alumni on how to navigate your way post-MBA.
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The Houston Energy Trek
Hearing presentations from industry experts at global energy companies — Anadarko, Exxon Mobile, Credit Suisse Oil and Halliburton among them — gives Cox students an insider’s view of the accomplishments and challenges of the energy business. Along with meeting energy industry leaders in their offices, this trek offers the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences with members of Rice University’s MBA Energy Club and Cox alumni who've made energy the focus of their careers. Career shifter Ben Meyer (MBA '16), a former high school teacher, credits the trek with helping him pinpoint — and then meet — his post-graduation goal: a career in the energy industry.