Ivey High School Case Competition, January 2018.

EXPERIENCING AN IVEY CASE STUDY

By Yi Wen (Wendy) Xia, Grade 11

In late January, Victoria Stefanson, Yu Chen (Zoe) Zhang, and I travelled to Ivey Business School at University of Western Ontario to attend their High School Case Competition, where students read business cases and make action plans to solve problems.

There were 80 students who attended this year. During the introductory session, an experienced business teacher went through the sample case to give us a brief idea about the case study. He added some tips for the later presentation, as well. After this tutoring, we were assigned to different groups. I worked with five other students and a team leader who is a student at Ivey.

The case was about Porsche Canada. Porsche wanted to weave a winter driving message into its social media to encourage more people to buy their cars in the winter. We analyzed the case and made an action plan for the problem. Most of the students who came to the competition had some experience in business courses. I felt very nervous about my lack of experience. In the group discussion, I also realized the gap between my peers and me when I heard the business vocabulary blurted out by my team members and skillfully used in some case analysis techniques. I tried my best to join the discussion and plan the solution with my teammates.

We completed our presentation smoothly. Although we did not receive a very good score, I gained a lot from the experience of this competition. For example, before creating a business plan or making decisions, it is important to scan the internal and external environment. This can be achieved through a SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of any organization, as well as a PEST analysis, which is an investigation of the political, economic, social, and technological influences on a business.

The day before the competition, the three of us, with Ms Brenda Boonstra, took some time to explore campus. Compared with the bustle of University of Toronto, Western is quieter but still vibrant. We met with Anne Campbell, Class of 2017 Head Girl. She showed us around her dormitory, sharing her experiences of first-year college life along with advice for us in Senior School. She said we had better give ourselves more challenges such as taking AP courses to be better prepared.

Later, we had dinner with two other alumnae, Yu Xuan (Amy) Song '16 and Julia White '14, who also shared some of the realities they have faced in their university lives.

This was not my first time in London, Ont., but still I reaped the benefits of the two-day trip that gave me a new impression of the city and University of the Western Ontario.

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