A practical guide to admissions, curriculum tracks, costs, and career outcomes for UT's new BS/MS.
The University of Texas at Austin will enroll its first Cockrell-McCombs B.S./M.S. Honors Program cohort in fall 2027, starting in mechanical engineering or petroleum and geosystems engineering.1 McCombs tracks include business analytics, finance, marketing, and information technology and management.1
Applications opened in August 2026; admitted students must hold a 3.5 GPA and receive dedicated scholarships.1 The financial question is the fifth year: one extra year of graduate tuition replaces a year of engineering salary, a trade-off that rewards the combination only when hiring managers see stronger BBA job prospects from the blended credential.
Engineering and business schools are now competing to embed commercial fluency inside technical training rather than treating business skills as optional add-ons. The Cockrell-McCombs B.S./M.S. Honors Program, which launches at the University of Texas at Austin in fall 2027, is one of the clearest examples: a five-year track in which students complete a bachelor's degree from the Cockrell School of Engineering and a specialized master's degree from the McCombs School of Business.
This is not a double major under a single bachelor's degree, and it is not the traditional dual-degree model where students layer one full business degree on top of an engineering degree over six or more years. It also differs from UT Austin's legacy engineering-business routes often labeled with the older ERB shorthand, which typically stop at the undergraduate level. The Cockrell-McCombs program is a coordinated honors pathway that compresses two degrees into five years while requiring students to keep a 3.5 GPA.
The first cohorts will draw from mechanical engineering and petroleum and geosystems engineering majors. Within McCombs, admitted students choose among four specialized Master of Science tracks: business analytics, finance, marketing, or information technology and management. Enrollment is intentionally selective, with small cohorts and applications opened in August 2026 for the fall 2027 start.
The five-year path is a sequenced route that combines a Cockrell School engineering bachelor's degree with a McCombs School of Business master's degree in one continuous plan, not two separate degrees stacked together after graduation1. Launching with the fall 2027 cohort2, the Cockrell-McCombs BS/MS Honors Program has announced its broad structure1, but UT Austin has not yet published an official term-by-term course list. The likely sequence is therefore a first-year international experience, layered internships across the middle years, and a final year devoted to one of four master's tracks.
This outline is a reasonable reading of the announced program, not a confirmed catalog plan. Before the full degree plan is released, students should expect the first year to blend introductory engineering coursework with the global component, and the master's coursework to sit mainly after undergraduate requirements are met.
The undergraduate catalogs provide some reference points. The Petroleum Engineering catalog lists 128 credits, and the Geosystems Engineering catalog lists 132 credits. Mechanical engineering requirements are not detailed in the integrated program materials, and UT Austin has not published a combined BS/MS credit count1. Those catalog numbers describe the engineering base only, not the integrated program's final load.
Each student selects one McCombs Master of Science specialization: business analytics, finance, marketing, or information technology and management, a business technology management field1. That choice is expected to steer the fifth-year schedule and capstone or project work, but no track-specific curricula or credit loads have been released1. For a prospective student, the practical difference is significant: the final year will look very different depending on the selected master's track, including finance careers for students who choose that specialization, while the earlier engineering foundation is expected to stay the same across all four paths.
Architectural and engineering managers earned a median annual wage of $167,740 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These roles combine technical engineering oversight with business leadership, exactly the profile this five-year degree is designed to fill.
Searches for "engineering business at UT Austin" often mix three distinct options. The Engineering Route to Business (ERB) is a legacy pathway, Texas ECB is the current four-year honors dual degree in electrical and computer engineering plus business, and the Cockrell-McCombs BS/MS is the new five-year integrated program launching in fall 2027.
| Feature | Legacy ERB | Texas ECB (4-Year) | Cockrell-McCombs BS/MS (5-Year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admission selectivity | Open to engineering undergraduates through a UT Austin advising sheet; no separate selective admission process | Selective honors option; applicants choose Unspecified Business and Electrical and Computer Engineering as first and second choice majors and designate Texas ECB as an honors choice | Highly selective with small cohorts; open to first-year students admitted to mechanical engineering or petroleum and geosystems engineering |
| Degree awarded | Standard engineering and business degrees earned separately; no separate ERB credential | Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering with ECE Honors distinction plus Bachelor of Business Administration | Bachelor of Science in Mechanical or Petroleum Engineering plus specialized Master of Science in Business |
| Depth of business education | One business block chosen from Finance/Accounting, Supply Chain Management, Management Information Systems, or Marketing | Full BBA with Canfield Business Honors curriculum, including case-based business courses and entrepreneurship programming | Specialized Master of Science track in business analytics, finance, marketing, or information technology and management |
| Timeline and program structure | Curated combination of existing engineering and business blocks; not a formal honors dual degree with a fixed duration | 4 years, 48 months; ECE and business honors courses begin in first semester, program-specific capstone in final year | 5 years, 60 months; first-year study abroad, engineering internship, graduate-level business coursework, and business-focused internship |
| Cost and financial aid | No program-specific scholarship stated in reviewed program materials | No dedicated program scholarship stated in current Texas ECB materials | Dedicated scholarships available to admitted students; students must maintain at least a 3.5 GPA to remain in the program |
The Cockrell-McCombs BS/MS Honors Program is an admissions pathway for incoming first-year students, not a transfer option for current UT Austin students.
Texas resident and nonresident budgets split early, and the five-year Cockrell-McCombs path adds a graduate year that is not simply a repeat of undergraduate pricing.
UT Austin's Texas One Stop lists a Cockrell School and McCombs School differential tuition of $550 per semester for Texas residents and $1,100 per semester for nonresidents.1 That differential is included in the advertised rate for students taking 12 or more credit hours and is prorated below that load. Resident undergraduate academic costs are frozen for 2025-26 and 2026-27.2
McCombs' own cost examples are narrower. Texas resident tuition is $6,788 per semester with room and board at $7,414, while nonresident tuition is $23,249 per semester with room and board at $7,482.3 McCombs also reports annual tuition of $13,576 for in-state students.3 The university's tuition table lists a Business college rate of $29,097 for 12-plus hours,4 but Texas One Stop and McCombs publish these figures in different formats. As a result, there is no single unified all-in total for every student profile, and prospective students should evaluate bba program cost alongside business degree ROI by major before treating any one figure as the total cost.
UT Austin has not published a program-specific cost breakdown for the Cockrell-McCombs BS/MS. General undergraduate tables and McCombs cost pages do not automatically extend to the master's portion. Ask UT Austin directly about fifth-year graduate tuition, fees, and whether the differential tuition structure continues beyond the bachelor's degree.
Admitted students are eligible for dedicated scholarships, but exact award amounts have not been published. Standard financial aid, including federal and institutional aid based on the FAFSA, remains the baseline route. Confirm residency classification, fifth-year tuition, and scholarship renewal terms with Texas One Stop and the program office before committing.
Admission is intentionally selective and cohorts stay small, so expect competition. Once you enter, the real filter is academic: students must hold at least a 3.5 GPA to remain in the program. That standard protects access to dedicated scholarships and keeps the fall 2027 cohort focused on high performance.
The decision students weigh here is whether one extra year of tuition and delayed full-time engineering income is worth the specialized master's credential and broader career options. McCombs salary data shows the business master's can lift starting pay above the national business-degree average, but the dual-degree program itself has no graduates yet, so its specific premium remains unproven.
UT Austin McCombs MSBA Class of 2025 employment report: 81.4% accepted an offer within six months, with an average starting salary of $104,798. Three quarters of accepted employment was in business analytics or consulting. Function-specific figures from the same report show the range.
All other roles show only a range of $40,000 to $135,600 in the report; full averages are not published for that group.
UT Austin McCombs MSITM Class of 2026 fact sheet reports an average starting salary of $110,360 and median of $95,500 across 40 job-seeking students, with a maximum of $220,000. Among these students, 25% had a first offer by graduation and 85% had accepted within six months. For context, NACE projects the national average starting salary for Class of 2026 business degree graduates at $68,873, up 5.5% from the prior year. That national figure is not specific to engineering-business dual-degree graduates.
Cohort-level outcomes for the new Cockrell-McCombs program are not available because the first class starts in fall 2027. The career reports used here do not publish internship placement rates, and no comparable UT Austin engineering-only bachelor's salary data is provided in these sources, so a direct engineering-only versus dual-degree comparison cannot yet be made. McCombs MSBA Class of 2025 top employers included Whole Foods, Walmart, Amazon, Dell, Expedia, and Goldman Sachs; typical roles included Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Business Analyst, Business Intelligence Specialist, Consultant, and Product Analyst.
For a fifth year, students gain a business master's alongside an engineering bachelor's, a combination employers reward in technical leadership roles.
Four-year dual degrees and five-year master's paths differ in one practical way: the credential earned. Penn M&T is a coordinated four-year program between Wharton and Penn Engineering. It requires roughly 46 credit units and uses a defined integration sequence that ends in a senior Integration Lab. Business and engineering are paired throughout, but the program awards dual bachelor's degrees rather than a graduate business degree.
Lehigh's Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) is a four-year B.S. requiring 136 credits, which is heavier than many engineering majors. Its optional Five-Year Dual-Degree Plan adds a second B.S. in an engineering field and requires at least 30 additional credits beyond the lower-credit degree.2 IBE students take an IBE seminar,3 but published details on deeper integration are limited. Neither Penn M&T nor Lehigh publishes admission metrics or fifth-year GPA thresholds in the same way UT Austin's 3.5 floor does.1
For comparison-minded readers prioritizing BBA job prospects, the practical distinction is the graduate credential. UT Austin is the only program in this set that intentionally ends with a specialized master's degree.1 The Cockrell-McCombs program is currently the clearest five-year path to a business master's for engineering students. Its initial engineering majors are mechanical and petroleum/geosystems, and its MS concentrations in business analytics, finance, marketing, and IT management go beyond what undergraduate-only dual degrees offer. Programs such as Notre Dame ESTEEM and Case Western's integrated engineering-business tracks often appear in comparison searches, but current public specifics were too thin to compare fairly. Treat this shortlist as directional, not exhaustive.
