Cornell Prepares for the National Real Estate Challenge
This week six graduate students from Cornell’s Program in Real Estate (PRE) and the Johnson Graduate School of Management will travel to Austin to compete in the National Real Estate Challenge on November 17-18th. This competition is hosted by the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Twenty of the top graduate real estate and business programs in the United States will participate in this annual case-based competition.
Cornell’s team includes Ian McKay (PRE 2011), Justin Brown (MBA 2011), Tyler Williams (PRE/MBA 2011), Stephen Woodward (PRE 2011), Trista Miller (MBA 2011) and Clifton Coffey (PRE/MBA 2011). Understudies travelling with the team are Ben Gottlieb (MBA 2012) and Connor MacLennan (PRE 2012). The team has prepared and presented multiple practice cases to a committee who advised the team and provided experiential context for different types of developments and cases. Volunteers and faculty advisors included Brad Olson, Jon Minikes, Pike Oliver and Angela Noble-Grange. Oliver and Minikes are travelling with the team to Austin and hope to join them in celebration for a strong showing.
The competition is organized with preliminary rounds of four schools each, with one team advancing from each preliminary section into a final of four. Each round is judged by a panel of respected real estate professionals from a variety of firms such as Goldman Sachs, The Lionstone Group, Rothschild Realty Managers LLC, Bentall Kennedy, Real Estate Capital Partners, JMI Realty and many others. The competition provides an outstanding opportunity for participants to gain exposure to and experience with the complex challenges faced by real estate professionals.
In addition to competing, participants are given time to interface with students from top MBA programs and real estate professionals. Ian Mckay commented, “I am very excited to participate in the event and compete with some of the nation’s best real estate students. The opportunity to network with the next generation of real estate leaders is one of the best aspects of the competition.” All participants’ resumes have been submitted to McCombs prior to the competition and compiled into an aggregated resume book for the entire competition. Judges and prospective employers use this resume book and the competition as a whole to meet students and gauge their potential as new hires for their firms. The competition also features a dinner and other events that provide employers and students a chance to meet and interact.