A team of McCombs MBA students won this year’s University of North Carolina Real Estate Development Challenge on Feb. 15, taking home bragging rights in addition to the $10,000 prize. The tower will be lit on March 19 to celebrate their victory. The national competition, which took place Feb. 14-15 in Chapel Hill, N.C., brought together 16 teams from MBA programs across the country. Teams were given the real estate development case on the Tuesday before the competition and presented their plans to judges on Friday morning. Four teams advanced to the finals, where they presented again. Second place went to a team from Columbia University, and teams from Vanderbilt and UCLA tied for third place.

This year’s case was for the development of a 136-acre plot of land east of downtown Houston. The McCombs team, which included first-year MBA students Richard Long, Mason Gilmore, and Ziad Haddad, and second-year MBA student Courtney Blackburn, developed their plan to include a largely residential area with some parks along the bayou, anchoring the area with a large H-E-B grocery store.

The students had a mixed-income outlook for the development, designing townhomes and apartments that would attract tenants from various income levels.

The team attributes part of their success to their varied backgrounds in real estate. Gilmore worked in Houston and was familiar with the specific site, so he was able to contribute to the conceptual plan. Long had a background in development, so he contributed to the finance aspects of the plan as well as the modeling and phasing for the project. Haddad had previously studied architecture, and using his experience and software, the team created a visual of the entire development. Blackburn, a Houston native, acted as the student coordinator for the University of Texas National Real Estate Competition, and contributed her knowledge of the area as well as her experience on the other side of the competition.

Gilmore says that because the team had so much prior experience, they were able to work toward a goal easily and quickly.

“We worked really well together and we were all on board with our site plan vision,” Gilmore says. “We were able to come to agreeance early, which allowed us to make our presentation a little more detailed than our competition.”

The team worked on the presentation for several hours after receiving the case on Tuesday, and then worked from 8 a.m. Wednesday to 4 a.m. Thursday before boarding their flight to Chapel Hill. According to Blackburn, the time limitation was the team’s biggest challenge.

“I’d say the biggest challenge was the time crunch,” Blackburn says. “At a certain point, you worry if you’ll have enough time, but I think it ended up working out great.”

Despite the stress of the competition, Gilmore says the competition has given the team real-world experience across all areas of real estate development.

“It was a fun experience, and it was very helpful,” Gilmore says. “We were able to look at all aspects of the development process, the site plan, the phasing, the market, and the numbers. Usually you're just able to look at one aspect as a part of your job, but having to balance them all was a fun learning experience.”

Blackburn agrees, saying that she believes the competition experience will benefit her in her future career.

“This is what I’m going to be doing in real life, and it definitely got me excited about going out in the real world,” Blackburn says. “I loved it, and it was easily the most rewarding thing I’ve done with my MBA so far.”

Reposted from McCombs Today

Google Calendar is Joshua Hu’s “best friend.” The third-year student is enrolled in both the Business Honors Program (BHP) and the MPA program. He is the president of the Asian Business Students Association, an active member of the Undergraduate Business Council, and a student recruiter for BHP. His intramural basketball team, the Basket Brawlers, will play for the third season this spring.

He spent last summer as the Leadership Operations intern at Amazon, and will intern with General Electric this summer in Connecticut.

Hu’s combination of academic excellence, extracurricular involvement, and leadership skills is the trifecta that defines a BHP student.

In an already competitive, top-ranked business school, BHP is even tougher to get into. In 2012, 1,061 students applied, and only 235 were accepted. The average SAT score for the admitted class was 1480, and the average high school class rank was the top 2.1 percent, more than twice the already staggeringly exclusive 5.7 percent average rank of the broader BBA freshman class.

And once students enroll, there’s lots of work ahead, both inside and outside the classroom. But BHP students say it’s worth the effort.

“It takes a lot of self-control, “ Hu says, “because you have to lay out your schedule and always make school a priority because you’re in college for a reason.”

BHP is both a major and an honors program, modeled after case-based MBA programs. Students have access to smaller classes, an accelerated curriculum, top professors, and an Honors Lyceum that brings in business leaders as guest speakers. BHP also offers hands-on academic boot camps, a peer tutor database, and case preparation workshops led by MBA faculty.

Robert Prentice is the associate chairman of the Business, Government and Society department as well as the faculty director for the Business Honors Program.

He says that, like Hu, most of the students in the program have a second major, whether it’s another business major, or something outside McCombs such as Spanish or engineering.

Prentice believes that while the program encourages students to get involved around campus and explore their academic options, the students that BHP recruits and admits are the type of students who seek leadership opportunities on their own, as well.

“We select students that have demonstrated good leadership in high school and we give them as many opportunities to hone those skills with the notion that when they go out in the real world, they’ll be able to make a difference,” Prentice says. “Our kids like to make a difference. They like to make BHP a better program, they like to make McCombs a better school, and make UT a better university, and make Austin a better place to live, and we’re really proud of that.”

Justine Taylor-Raymond, a senior BHP and finance major, says she sought to be admitted to the program as a sophomore because she wanted a challenging academic environment.

“It’s much more about coming to the answers through cases and examples, and the tests are just that extra level beyond,” she says.

Like Hu, Taylor-Raymond is a leader in several organizations. She is the corporate relations vice president for the Honors Business Association and the scholarship and service chair for the Orange Jackets, an honorary service student organization.  She also acts as a peer mentor for incoming BHP freshmen and is an active member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.

Keeping up with all that takes a “mildly color coded” planner and a love for each organization.

All that work pays off. BHP students have a near-100 percent job placement rate upon graduation, and last year earned the highest average starting salary—$63, 144—of all majors.

Prentice says that recruiters frequently reach out to the program because of its reputation for producing hardworking and successful employees.

Hu believes that his experience in BHP has enhanced his college experience and prepared him for future success.

“The skills that are emphasized in BHP, like presenting and teamwork, will definitely be applicable in the future, no matter what career I do,” Hu says. “A lot of the classes within BHP teach you how to think by analyzing cases and thinking outside of the box. In the workplace, not everything will come to you easily. You have to make tough decisions, think about things, and work through a lot of problems, and BHP really prepares you for that future career.”

In addition to career preparation, Hu says BHP offers him the opportunity to work with a community of highly motivated students and friends. Taylor-Raymond agrees, and says that that joining BHP helped define her time at UT.

“BHP has probably been my favorite thing at UT,” Taylor-Raymond says. “The people I’ve met and the connections I’ve made are with some of the strongest people here, and I can already feel that I’ve benefited from my experiences inside and outside of the classroom. BHP has been fun, challenging, and rewarding.”

Reposted from McCombs Today