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Lazaridis School team wins 2018 Solvers' Cup in Budapest
Oct. 4, 2018
Print | PDFThis September, a team of undergraduate students from the Lazaridis School travelled to Budapest, Hungary to participate in the Solvers’ Cup – an international case competition organized by Case Solvers. Thanks to their hard work, passion, and dedication, we are delighted to congratulate Matthew Donovan, Ruslan Nikolaev, Mike Ross and Samantha Sells for winning first place in the competition!
The Solvers’ Cup brings together undergraduate students from prestigious business schools from around the world to compete in both a 4-hour and 10-hour case competition. The competition hosted 12 international teams onsite as well as additional teams online for the skill showcase.
The Lazaridis team practiced for weeks on their presentation skills under the guidance of Laurier alumni partner Srin Sridharan, partner at Waypoint Investment and Sofy Carayannopoulos, associate professor at the Lazaridis School.
Srin, who accompanied the students to Budapest, shared his sentiments.
“There is an immense sense of pride watching our students get the recognition they deserve internationally. Students need more opportunities such as this to meet, compete against and be successful against the very best schools. In this past year alone, Laurier has placed ahead of some of the top ranked schools in the US, Europe, Asia and Canada.”
The participants agreed that it was an honour to represent Laurier on an international level. “Laurier is a relatively new school in the international case circuit and every opportunity is valuable for defining our brand,” explains Mike Ross. “I cherish the moments when the small school from Canada surprises a room that wasn’t ready for us.”
With all of the additional practices and dedication, the students also recognize the role the core BBA curriculum played in their success. Samantha explains, “The nature of these international cases is that they draw on connections and relationships between functional areas. Having a solid foundation in each area from our courses [at the Lazaridis School] helped us to come up with sound, well thought out recommendations.”
Ruslan adds, “I think the Laurier courses have been fundamental to our work, specifically at teaching the theory of various business frameworks and concepts. The reality is, when you are in the room solving a case and you are on the clock, you don’t have the time to look up and figure out the theory behind business concepts, you are supposed to just apply them. This is why learning in school has been fundamental to performing well in case competitions.”
“Solving cases is a great opportunity to work on finding tangible solutions and recommendations for real problems being faced by real companies. It's great to be able to demonstrate to future employers the real experience that solving cases provides.” says Matthew, and he’s right. Participating in case competitions is not only a great way to represent Laurier and build tangible skills, it’s also an amazing way to broaden your professional network and build business relationships that may be helpful when searching for a career after graduation.
Again, we would like to congratulate the 2018 Solvers’ Cup winners from the Lazaridis School - Matthew Donovan, Ruslan Nikolaev, Mike Ross and Samantha Sells. Thank you for being wonderful ambassadors on the international stage.
