Business Competitions for High School Students
Are you a high school student interested in business and entrepreneurship? Business competitions are one of the most meaningful experiences high school students can have. While participating in business competitions, students will need combine their skills and understanding of innovation, resourcefulness, and communication to create and pitch a product or bring out a business plan. Either way, business competitions are an excellent way for a student to use their problem solving skills to solve real world problems and stand out to colleges. In this blog post, we are discussing business competitions for high school students.
Benefits of participating in business competitions as a high school student
There are so many benefits of participating in business competitions as a high school student!
There’s a whole new world
Participating in a business competition is an excellent way to learn about how to start a business and bring yourself out into the market. A business competition can teach you to analyze trends in the market in order to come up with innovative solutions that can benefit society. Furthermore, a business competition is a great way for high schoolers to gain feedback on their product, pitch, overall startup plan, and more. They can use this to further pursue their passion in business and improve their own company.
Gain important skills
When you hear the term “business competitions,” you most likely think of smart individuals coming up with phenomenal methods of innovating and selling products. However, not many people realize that business competitions helps build four of the most important skills that everyone needs—creativity, communication, resourcefulness, and determination. High school students can learn resourcefulness to sort through numerous data and look through current industry trends and grow their creativity by coming up with a product that satisfies the needs of the changing market. In order to create awareness of the product among consumers, high schoolers can develop great communication skills in order to assist them. However, owning a business is a risk. It can fail and succeed at times. This is where high schoolers will gain their determination skills.
Discover yourself
Business competitions are an excellent way for high schoolers discover their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses. They can significantly grow as individuals through dedicating their time and effort into preparing for their business competitions. They can also discover what they are passionate about through these types of competitions since business ties every industry together. This can be extremely valuable to an individual not only when it comes to competing, but in their futures as well.
Win, stand out, confidence!
Business competitions are great way to stand out among a sea of college applicants. Participating in a business competition as a high school student can show great amount of effort, dedication, and originality due to the fact that every business is unique in their own way. Most business competitions also have cash prizes and scholarships that winners can qualify for, which can be a plus for students applying to colleges. Lastly, business competitions can spark confidence and more belief in your own abilities.
Networking
Business competitions are not only a place to show off your efforts, but make new friends. Business competitions are swarming with people who are ambitious, willing to make connections, and even might have the same passions as you. Take advantage of this and make some lifelong friendships! You never know when that may come in handy…
Examples of Business Competitions for High School Students
DECA
Hotels, Fashion, Restaurants, Innovation Plan! If you are passionate about many different areas in business, want to use your problem solving skills, meet new people, DECA is the competition for you! DECA Stands for Distributive Education Clubs of America and has 58 competitive events from different industries. I personally love DECA and I am an active member of DECA at my high school. DECA has helped me gain communication skills and think outside of the box to come up with innovative solutions on the spot. DECA awards scholarships, recognitions to top performers at International Career Development Conference, and helps a person “get the edge.” Overall, it is a phenomenal experience and one of my most favorite things in high school so far.
Wharton Global High School Investment Corporation
Want to expose yourself to one of the most prestigious business schools of all times? Looking forward to gaining professional entrepreneurial skills and financial skills. Wharton’s Global youth program is a prestigious program that can help a person gain experience in the business field. This program has a 10 week crash course on investing, business analysis, and pitch creation. In addition teams of 4-7 people will be tasked on pitching a product and can qualify until finals where winners can win a spot at Wharton’s summer program.
Business Professionals of America - BPA
BPA is a wonderful organization that provides members with countless competition opportunities in business in various paths such as business, medical, computer science, and more. This organization can provide so many valuable skills across many different career paths and grow in those career paths. They can experience how to conduct themselves in that industry. Competitors have the opportunity to qualify for regions, state, and national level.
Global Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge
This is a phenomenal competition where students ages 14 - 19 are presented with a problem and are tasked to come up with innovative solutions. Each team of 8 members are given a global problem based on a tech, business communication, science, or more and are presented with a time limit of 12 hours where they would have to pitch a solution in the end.
The Blue Ocean Competition
Considered one of the biggest entrepreneurial challenges in the whole world, The Blue Ocean Challenge is the best way to get exposed to the business world. Through this competition, you will be connected with multiple mentors, like minded peers, and entrepreneurs who can help you in your journey to becoming successful. At the end of this competition, a person can enter as an individual or with a group to present a 5-minute pitch about their unique and innovative solutions. The prize is a cash prize of $500 - $1000 and an internship opportunity.
Business competitions are a fantastic opportunity to throw yourself out there no matter what career path you are interested in. They can help you get connected with others, understand the workings of an industry, and help you grow to be a smart and savvy individual!
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
