By: Carrie Gilmour
Scho
A challenge for SAF students on co-op is not being on campus together to rehearse and prepare for competitions.
Dennis Zhang’s team was in this position so they got creative and made the most of the five-hour train trip to Ottawa.
The competition happened while everyone on the team was on co-op, so it was hard for us to meet up beforehand. The organizers told us the competition was in the form of a stock pitch, so we created a list of promising companies for each sector and did some individual research. On the train we talked about our top picks and short listed the ones we liked. When the actual competition came, we wasted no time selecting a company and just took one of the companies we short listed.
SAF classes reinforce team building and time management so when it comes time to present, students are prepared to highlight their strengths as a team.
Working together with this team, I learned that it's very good to have people with a wide range of experiences. All four of us had very different backgrounds, we studied different programs (AFM, CFM and Math/CPA), we worked in different fields during co-op (public accounting, sales trading, real estate and asset management), and we had different experiences and skills developed from previous competitions and the Student-run Investment Fund. The diversity of our experiences really came through as an advantage during the question session after the presentation. No matter how hard the judges' questions were, one of us could step forward with a great answer.
The SAF is very proud of you, congratulations!