Four Corvinus Students Make History

At the event, where teams from 30 elite MBA schools from around the world competed, our team of four students from the Master of Management and Organisation Master’s Degree Programme Réka Izsák (1st semester), Nóra Kozma (3rd semester), Attila Légrádi (3rd semester) and Stella Nagy (2nd semester) represented our University. Their tutor was Dr. Balázs Felsmann, Director of the Institute of Management.   

The online competition closed on 8 January. The competition consisted of three rounds, in the first of which the organisers divided the competitors into five divisions. In this round, the teams had to solve five different case studies in five pairs competitions, which were presented to a new jury consisting of mainly corporate executives each day. A particular challenge was that they had only 3 hours to complete the task, which was immediately followed by a 25-minute presentation and a 15-minute Q&A. The Corvinus team was the only one to finish this round with five victories.   

It is one of the most prestigious competitions of its kind in the world, the top of its category. Competitors from other universities were mainly from MBA courses, and the teams were generally older than the Corvinus students. Due to the time difference, we started the day around 2-3 pm, the presentations were between 6-7 pm, after which the detailed scores and text feedback arrived 1-1.5 hours later. At the end of each day we discussed the experiences, which were then incorporated the next day,

Balázs Felsmann recalled his experiences. 

And in the semi-finals, where they played against two teams, they beat the teams of University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business and Lund University.  

The Corvinus students also did well in the final, finishing in third place behind Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and Porto Business School.  

The most exciting part was that the case studies had to be solved in 3 hours. A case study was 20-25 pages long, which took time to process, and then of course they had to find a solution and prepare the presentation. It is important to mention that the organisers selected cases of a very high quality. Through the continuous feedback we improved a lot during the week. We had an exciting contest over 5 days, we were the only team to win all our challenges in the semi-finals,

said Nóra Kozma. 

According to the team, their success was mainly due to the excellent team composition and the unbroken support and encouragement of their tutor, who provided the team with high level professional feedback on a daily basis.   

The students worked well together, trusting each other and building on each other’s knowledge. In addition to professional feedback, my most important role was mental support. I would like to emphasise that this achievement is not the merit of one teacher, but of all my colleagues who contributed to the preparation of our students by sharing their knowledge,

Balázs Felsmann added.  

Congratulations on your outstanding results!