"The experience is unforgettable"
Students from Reykjavík University recently participated in two international business competitions: the Rotman Financial Competition in Canada and the BI Real-World Competition in Oslo.
The RU students who took part in the well-known Rotman competition were in 21st place out of 45. RU took part in the competition now for the third time. The team had to compete with some of the world's largest business schools, such as Harvard, that has a long history of competing in Rotman. The team members were students from the Faculty of Business and the Faculty of Engineering. RU's participation is sponsored by Nasdaq, Kvika, Landsbankinn, Icelandair and Íslandsbanki.
Davíð Scheving Thorsteinsson, a student in financial engineering, was a member of the team. He says it was instructive and very fun to compete with students from many of the world's largest business schools. "The competition consisted of three projects, where we needed to programme a trading algorithm and to produce, process, and trade crude oil. We did really well this year and landed above schools like Harvard, Boston University and UCLA. Overall, the competition gave us a good insight into what it is like to operate in the financial markets, especially in times of a world epidemic. The experience is valuable and the experience is without a doubt unforgettable."
Members of the two competing teams.
In the BIIC competition, hosted by BI, the Norwegian Business School, RU's team was in second place in a two-group competition. A total of eight teams participated from business schools and business faculties in the Nordic countries. The RU team did a great job and managed to do better than many well-known Nordic universities. This is the first time that RU students take part in the competition and the team had to register last minute.
Elín Helga Lárusdóttir, a business student, was on RU's team in the BIIC competition and says it was an honour to have been selected for the team and given this opportunity. "The competition was truly a great challenge, but at the same time a very good experience for us who competed and a great opportunity to prove our skills and abilities in finding and implementing solutions. Good team spirit, creative thinking, solution-oriented and good cooperation gave our team very good results, and better than I expected. This lesson will pay off and I encourage everyone who gets this opportunity to join."
The participation of the two teams was organised and initiated by the Department of Business Administration. We congratulate the students in both teams on this outstanding achievement.
