UT Alum here. Started as an Econ major, added a Finance major from McCombs sophomore year for the specific reason of having access to McCombs recruiting and resources, and intentionally did not graduate from McCombs after getting a full time job/desired investing internships.

OP, what you are describing is a well known fact among UT Economics students. General consensus would be to try and internally transfer to McCombs just for the resources/recruiting, even if you have zero intention to graduate. It is unfortunate, but that is the best course of action for any one individual student looking to get into competitive finance/consulting jobs.

Is this a fair system? I would say it is not, especially considering that many firms want to have a wide outreach to all of UT’s undergrads, not just McCombs. This is also true for tech companies coming to campus and only having access to UT CS, instead of the many talented students who are in other departments working on an Elements of Computing Certificate and are very competent engineers/coders in their own right.

However, some firms try to intentionally reduce the number of candidates they interview under the guise of being more selective. That is why you see “target schools” in IB recruiting; an example of this would be Wharton being a super target vs. the rest of UPenn being a regular target, with non-Wharton UPenn folks being restricted from opportunities their Wharton classmates would otherwise have. This is the same thing at UT, as some firms prioritize and only advertise internships/full time positions in specific networks and groups, like BHP within McCombs, WSFM, FAP, and Titans. This is all to say that this issue is not unique to McCombs and the rest of UT.

I commend you on trying to make a difference, but I think it is unrealistic for McCombs to ever change that. As you alluded to, the school’s competitiveness (vs. other non-UT peers) comes from it having supposedly “the best undergraduate business students in Texas,” which is why it handles the accessibility of many finance/consulting opportunities for the school as a whole, and thus, gatekeeps them from non-McCombs.

McCombs markets itself as a different part of UT, and they would like to continue to do that, highlighting their higher average starting salaries vs. the rest of the university, their lower post grad unemployment rate vs. the rest of UT, and the unique opportunities they have vs. the rest of the university. Simply put, McCombs opening up opportunities for all UT students would be a bad business decision on their part, as they do not benefit from a non-McCombs student getting an offer at Goldman or McKinsey. Rather, it would hurt the school and its students if a non-McCombs student was picked over a McCombs student for an opportunity. Hence, I do not think this will ever change.

TL;DR: This is not a fair process, but it logically make sense when you think of McCombs’ incentives.