From left to right: Amy Liang (Q24), Conor Moore, Liya Ai (Q22), and Alex Wilson (Q22)

This past February, three of QUEST’s very own traveled all the way to Westlake, Texas for Deloitte’s National Consulting Undergraduate Case Study Competition. Liya Ai (Q22), Alex Wilson (Q22), Amy Liang (Q24), and Conor Moore received first place out of 28 University of Maryland teams and were National Finalists out of 17 total teams. I had the opportunity to interview Alex and Amy about their experiences in both the local and national competitions.

The National Consulting Undergraduate Case Competition took place at Deloitte University from February 26th-28th, 2015. Unlike the local competition at Maryland, which was a week long, the national competition is a weekend event. On Friday, the national contestants received the case at 5PM and submitted their PowerPoint presentations at midnight, giving them only seven hours to fully analyze the case and create a plan of action for the presentation. The morning after submissions, teams were scheduled to start presenting at 8:30AM. The structure of the presentations also differed from the preliminary rounds at Maryland. There were two presentations: one in front of schools and judges, and one with a different set of judges without school groups.

“While this can be stressful, it actually really helped our group because we learned so much from our first time presenting and had time in between the two presentations to iron out any kinks from the first time around and help us get over any nervous energy,” Amy commented.

Alex and Amy both agreed that the most challenging aspect of the National Consulting Case Competition was time – or rather lack of time. With the condensed time frame and one less member for the national presentations, Alex, Amy, and Liya barely had enough time to get their respective parts completed by the deadline. After the deadline, their team had to practice presenting before the official presentations the very same day. With increased pressure and competition from other schools and lack of sleep, participating in the National Undergraduate Consulting Case Competition was no easy task.

When asked about their favorite part of the competition, both Alex and Amy highlighted their second official presentations. Alex, who has participated in five Deloitte case competitions with Liya, said that their final presentation was most definitely the best one out of his case competition experience.

National Undergraduate Consulting Case Competition
From left to right: Liya Ai, Alex Wilson, and Amy Liang

“Our information was delivered as if we had known it all our lives, and our Q&A was flawless. Seeing our team overcome the difficulty of only having three members and succeeding was definitely my favorite moment,” Alex recalled.

Finally, for some parting words, I asked Alex and Amy for any advice for students who want to succeed in case competitions:

Amy: First, find the right team. You learn quickly in case competitions that there is never enough time, there will be disagreements amongst team members, and you won’t sleep very much (and hence you will all be cranky), so make sure that the people who you are working with are ones that you trust, who are committed to the competition, and who you have fun working with. Second, detail detail detail! Even though you have so little time and you can’t put everything on slides, make sure that you and your team have talked through every detail of your ideas and your presentation so that you have it all in your mind and can pull it out during Q&A. Finally, be creative! Case competitions are so fun because the sky is your limit. You can play around with some crazy ideas (as long as you have the numbers to back it up) and really flex your creative muscles to see what you and your team can come up with!