How To: Case Competitions 101

Defining Case Competitions

A real-world corporate situation or issue in the form of a case study. A competition against other student teams to present the most economically viable, sustainable and innovative solution. That in itself is what defines a case competition. Something similar to a university group project, but with a lot more at stake. 

Regardless of how difficult case competitions may sound, it is a critical experience for students from all years and faculties looking to pursue a career in the consulting industry. Students are often faced with a panel of judges who review their presentations through seeking quality within their team’s analysis, professional approach, and of course, how they advertise themselves. 

Benefits of a Case Competition

Case competitions are the next step to venture into a world of professionalism. It is there to bring your ideas to fruition by exploring your creative and innovative endeavours, build your professional stance in the industry, and enhance your core soft skills. 

Showcase Your Creativity

Spontaneous business ideas come and go. As a university student, there is no real opportunity to further develop these ideas in a professional light. These ideas remain untouched, unused and over time, neglected. A case competition, however, is the perfect experience to showcase these ideas through further consideration and implementation, depending on how suitable and practical it is to the challenge given.

Stepping into the Industry

In most cases, industry professionals are either invited as the guest panelists, or as the attendees who overlook the final pitches. This is a chance to emerge from your university student status, and build upon your social circle and network!

Essential Soft Skills

Critical-thinking, team collaboration, communication, and time management, are just some of the core soft skills learnt whilst participating in a case competition. The time constraints of these competitions are essential and helpful in developing these skills, as students are faced with internal and external conflict and pressure to excel.

Essential Resources

Resource 1: Find yourself a mentor to make things easier!

It would be extremely helpful if you can find a mentor who has “been there done that” to give you some tips and tricks on case competitions. Luckily, you can be easily connected to one through Mentoring Programs from several societies at UNSW. For example, at UNSW Women in Consulting, the Peer Mentoring Program held last year and earlier this year, paired up many mentors and mentees within the consulting industry. By the end of the program, mentees applied their newfound skills taught by their mentors and solved a case study in teams. So make sure to follow up on some of our similar programs in the future to gain some experience!

Resource 2: Books for case competitions if you enjoy reading

The MBA Crystal Ball site (noted below) lists the following recommendations: “Case in Point: Case Competition: Creating Winning Strategy Presentations for Case Competitions and Job Offers,” by Marc P. Cosentino, et al., published in October 2017, “Case Interview Secrets” by Victor Cheng, “Case Study Handbook” by William Ellet and “How to Avoid Getting Lost in Numbers” by David A. Maister.

Resource 3: Online websites

Online websites like thecasecentre.org or preplounge.com provide a list of various case competition examples to practise with. Other than that, you can also get on consulting firms’ websites (BCG, McKinsey, etc) to learn more about their problem solving frameworks.

Applying Theory to Practice

Now for the next step, you can find lots of case competitions at UNSW conducted by different types of societies, so challenge yourself with some of them! Other than that, you can also sign up for global case competitions that are normally held annually to win even bigger prizes! 

References

Management Consulted, 13 April 2022, Case Competition, <https://managementconsulted.com/case-competition/>. 

MBA Crystal Ball, 12 June 2021, Case competitions for students: Benefits and preparation tips, <https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2021/06/07/case-competitions-for-students/>.

miniEnterprize, 2021, Case Competitions: THE BEST HIGH SCHOOL OPPORTUNITY, <https://www.minienterprize.org/casecompetitions>. 

PrepLounge 2022, PrepLounge GmbH, <https://www.preplounge.com/en>.

The Case Centre 2022, Bedfordshire, <https://www.thecasecentre.org>.