Finance students in the past have participated in national student competitions. They are a great opportunity to practice and further your knowledge and skills you learned in the finance program at PSU. Because not all of you are finance major, grading will be generous as long as you follow the instructions (e.g., number counts for answers). In addition, it’s not a technical assignment. It’s an opportunity to look back and evaluate what you have learned, how they can be useful, and what else you should learn. Remember you chose finance as your major because you like something about finance. Follow your passion and keep learning what excites you, and you will have a bright future ahead of you. This is the last assignment of this course. Thank you for working hard in this course for the past 7 weeks.
Q1 What is the title of the finance student competition you may consider competing? Hint: You may Google search something like “student competitions in finance”.
The ACG cup has always piqued my interest and I may compete in the future if it is held.
Q2 Describe the eligibility requirements, if any (e.g., undergraduate college student).
Requirements for this competition include being an MBA undergraduate, and having a team ready to enter.
Q3 What are the competition criteria?
Each group is offered a critical thinking prompt from a “real life” business situation and is asked to solve it.
Q4 What is the deadline for the submission?
The deadline is January 25th 2021 at 11:59pm EST.
Q5 Why are you interested in this competition?
There is over $200,000 in scholarship funds in play as well as many job offers.
Q6 What would be a possible project you may turn in for the competition? Describe it in at least 100 words.
Every year the case study is provided, so a project cannot be thought of before competing. For example, last year the case study was based on an investment banking scenario. The presentation is the what really determines winners in this competition so the case study must be looked at as such. Almost every winner in the past has explained that this experience is the most grueling and intense work they have done in their lives because it is as close to a real investment banking situation as possible. The prompts are extremely in-depth and can take hundreds of hours to decipher.
Q7 List things that you learned in financial modeling course that could be helpful for your project in Q6. Describe it in at least 100 words.
In this course we learned many skills that could be useful in this competition. As mentioned in the previous question the case studies are extremely in depth and require a presentation equally in detail. This course has presented the task of modeling financial concepts and figures throughout the year and every aspect could potentially be utilized in the competition. Specifically making plots of data for investments and the stock market would be useful with an interpretation which was also a large part of this course. Interpreting the data is the most important part of the presentation and is a good way to show the judges that your team understands the concepts and can provide a promising solution to the task at hand.
Q8 List things that you learned in other finance courses at PSU that could be helpful for your project in Q6. Describe it in at least 100 words.
Financial Management is another course that could significantly aid in winning this competition. Instead of forming the plots and graphs, this class had a more in depth way of interpreting data and explaining it in words instead of figures. While showing figures of the interpretations can be helpful, being able to explain findings throughout the presentation is easily the most important for this competition. The case studies involved require many hours of research and financial management shows how to consolidate the important information and use it to your advantage as a team.
Q9 Check the finance blog below and see if you see any post that may be helpful for your project in Q6. Discuss how it can be helpful in at least 100 words. Hint: The author of the blog writes articles on financial analysis using R. https://rviews.rstudio.com/categories/reproducible-finance-with-r/
As I mentioned before, the case study is provided once it is released to each group, but even with that, the concept is always tied to investment banking and “tech-dividends part 2” could be very useful in developing a conclusion. The writer uses the SP500 and is interpreting stocks and stock movement which is exactly what the competition is based on. The article also explains how to visualize a lot of this data which is used correctly could be extremely helpful in interpreting the data. Data visualization is also a huge part of the presentation aspect which is a large factor in determining a winner of the competition.
Q10 List things that you think could be helpful but not taught/offered at PSU finance courses. Discuss how it can be helpful in at least 100 words.
The only thing that I can think of personally is a course around working your way up the chain into management. If there was a class specific to obtaining promotions I believe it could be very beneficial. Having a way to work around the bottlenecks of a management chain would be extremely helpful in reaching an executive job faster and in a stronger way. That course would aid a finance major immensely but would also be a great course for students in other majors to take as it would be applicable for them too. Business majors specifically can have a hard time getting shot right into executive positions right out of college so a course to help those that wont get lucky could be extremely beneficial.