A team of four University of Connecticut MBA candidates took first place in the fifth annual MBA Strategy Case Competition hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, held February 7-9. Ten schools participated in the competition: Arizona State, Baylor, Connecticut, Hong Kong UST, Illinois, Iowa State, Michigan State, Minnesota, Penn State, and Purdue. 

A complex business strategy case was distributed on Friday morning and participants went through a preliminary round on Saturday morning, presenting recommendations to a panel of judges. The top three schools advanced to a final round of presentations, with the final results placing the University of Connecticut team first, Baylor University second, and Purdue University in third place.

“The Illinois MBA Strategy Case Competition provides us with an opportunity to connect with other top MBA programs while giving students the opportunity to develop their business skills and expand their networks. We are fortunate to have tremendous support from our corporate sponsors, alumni, and friends of the program, allowing us to provide our students with this wonderful experiential learning opportunity,” says Courtney Grussing, coordinator of the event.

Two of five individual awards were also presented to the University of Connecticut. Christopher Gaito ’14 MBA left with a Best Speaker Award and Siddhartha Sharan ’13 MBA left with an award for Best Q&A Session. Dawei Zheng ’13 MBA and Jessica Hoffman ’14 MBA joined them in an outstanding overall performance. This is the second case competition win for UConn MBAs this month, who also took the first, second, and third places in the APICS Northeast case competition held in early February.

Pictured L to R: Christopher Gaito ’14 MBA, Jessica Hoffman ’14 MBA, Professor David Souder, Dawei Zheng ’13 MBA, and Siddhartha Sharan ’13 MBA.