Sophomores Solve National Expansion Issue for BHP Case Competition

Each year, all BHP sophomores compete in the BA151 Sophomore Lyceum Case Competition. The competition, held this past Friday, is the first case competition many of these students have competed in, and offers a great chance for them to practice the skills they are learning in their business classes.

This year’s case, presented by Sense Corp, presented students with the challenge of accelerating the national expansion of College Forward. College Forward is an Austin-based non-profit that coaches underserved, motivated students to achieve the benefits of higher education and a college degree.

The case asked student what one strategy they would suggest pursuing to scale the organization so it can serve more students both in Texas and nationally.

Out of 30 teams, five advanced to the final round. Each team took a very different approach to solving the problem, and the judges were impressed with the level of thought that went into the cases. In the end, first place went to Catherine Cheng, Emily Gex, Brandon Jodie, Thomas Jordan and Ronald Rodriguez. Honorable mention went to Zhiqi Wang, Alison Daily, Arjun Menta, Maitreya Movva and Veshal Prakash.

“Our team recognized how important it is for lower-income students to have access to information about higher-level education, and we wanted to reach the largest population of low income students possible with our proposed solution,” said Emily Gex. “By creating a website that we would license to high schools, students of all income levels would receive personalized information about colleges that would be perfect matches for them. By inputting one’s personal and financial information into our database, our website would automatically generate a list of scholarships that the individual student is eligible for. By handing low-income students personalized college and scholarship information, we hope to empower these students to continue onto higher-level education successfully.”

The names of the winning team members will be etched onto a plaque, which lives on permanent display in the BHP office. Congratulations to all of these students and special thanks to Sense Corp for providing us with such a great case, and to BHP alumnus Michael Daehne for coordinating the case on behalf of Sense Corp.

From left to right: Ron Rodriguez, Catherine Cheng, Thomas Jordan, Emily Gex, Brandon Jodie