Haas Newsroom
Undergraduates Win Citi Case Competition
October 24, 2008
A team of Haas undergraduates bested 17 other schools Oct. 27 to win the Citi International Case Competition at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
The Haas School team consisted of Sean Huang and Wei Li, both BS 09, and Sagar Gupta and Jimmy Shi, both BS 10. Gupta also received an outstanding speaker award during the competition.
"We are very proud that our students won this prestigious competition, which also was a fantastic experiential learning opportunity," says Erika Walker, executive director of the Undergraduate Program. "Their triumph is a huge coup for the Haas School and a testament to the stellar business education that undergraduates receive here at Haas."
Other competing schools included Georgetown, University of Virginia, University of Southern California, and McGill University in North America; Korea University and Auckland University of Technology in the Asia-Pacific; and the Helsinki School of Economics and Lund University in Europe.
The 13 competition judges complimented the Haas School team's performance and depth of analysis, which was of such high caliber that they thought the team consisted of MBA students. The judges included senior leaders from Citi; HKUST; and Ocean Park Corp., an amusement park in Hong Kong, which was the subject of the case competition.
As part of the competition, held from Oct. 20 to Oct. 23, students rode a bus to Ocean Park, where they listened to a two-hour presentation by the general manager on the park's expansion plans, including additional rides, animals, and an exhibit with year-round snow.
Each team had 26 hours to conduct an in-depth analysis of the case and provide strategic recommendations to Ocean Park management. During that period, students could not contact colleagues at their home institution or their advisor, Janet Amador, the Haas Undergraduate Program's director of admissions and operations, who accompanied the students to Hong Kong.
The three other finalists in the competition were Simon Fraser University in Canada, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and the National University of Singapore.
The Citi International Case Competition is sponsored by the Citi Foundation and jointly organized by Citi and the HKUST's School of Business and Management.
For more information about the Citi International Case Competition in Hong Kong, visit http://www.bm.ust.hk/ug/CICC. To read more about Haas students' experience in the competition, visit the Haas undergraduate students blog at http://haasundergrad.blogspot.com/.
