Case Competitions at Questrom | Explained by Greg Stoller, Director of Case Competitions

Case competitions are fantastic. These are events where a team of BEu students is analyzing a set of business facts and making a recommendation while competing against other schools in the process. In some cases, we are hosting these competitions internally. So, the students are competing against their classmates. The teams might prep for three or four weeks, but the competition itself only lasts for 24 or 48 hours. And that's where it gets really exciting. Case competitions are held throughout the academic year. We usually field anywhere between 20 to 25 teams. The students get an opportunity to apply what they're learning in the classroom to realworld problems. However, they're doing it as a team, which is exactly what business is all about. The students build skills in leadership, self-confidence, teamwork, the ability to work well under pressure in a timed format, and of course, their presentation skills. We regularly card first place, top five, top 10. We've won best speaker awards, best presenter awards. I'm really, really proud of what our Questroom students have accomplished. They're really motivated. They're willing to go around walls, under walls, on top of walls, or in some cases through walls in order to do what they can to get to the heart of these business issues. As a full-time student, you have the benefit to throw your all at a case competition. You can do whatever it takes to prepare, to travel, to debrief. In many cases, our full-time students enjoy the process so much that they decide to do multiple case competitions during their time at Quester. The companies that we work with range from two guys and two gals in a garage, the youngest of all startups to publicly traded international corporations whose names everyone has heard of to large privately held entities uh etc. They're looking to our students to assist them. Some of these might be past issues, current issues, or future issues where they're looking for an outside perspective. The expectations are going up higher every day. It used to be a matter that you could uh Google a couple of articles and you'd be okay. I think what I'm finding out uh that's pretty cool is that the companies that are sponsoring these competitions are offering their businesses as the cases are starting to implement the students recommendations. That's free help, but imagine as a student if you killed yourself trying to prepare for one of these presentations and all of a sudden you find out that the company's implementing what you recommended. To me, that's a home run.