Media Releases

2nd annual Rotman Problem Solving Challenge offers scholarships to MBA applicants

February 3, 2014

TORONTO, ON – More than $300,000 in schol­ar­ship mon­ey to the Rot­man Full Time MBA pro­gram will be up for grabs for the win­ners for the sec­ond annu­al Rot­man Prob­lem Solv­ing Chal­lenge to be held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.

Designed for prospec­tive and incom­ing Full Time MBA can­di­dates, the Chal­lenge pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for future Rot­man stu­dents to dive deep into a real-world unstruc­tured prob­lem using the School’s mod­el-based approached to prob­lem solv­ing. The first place fin­ish­er wins a full tuition schol­ar­ship val­ued at $90,000 with addi­tion­al indi­vid­ual and team-based prizes.

“We’re delight­ed to be able to build on the great suc­cess of our first Chal­lenge last year which allowed par­tic­i­pants to expe­ri­ence our approach to prob­lem solv­ing and to build their pre­sen­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions skills,” says Niki da Sil­va, Direc­tor, Recruit­ment & Admis­sions, Rot­man Full Time MBA. “Par­tic­i­pants were also able to meet their future class­mates and, in fact, one group of stu­dents who met at the Chal­lenge went on to win A.T. Kearney’s Glob­al Prize 2013, an annu­al strate­gic case com­pe­ti­tion, in Novem­ber.”

This year’s Chal­lenge has three rounds. In the first round, which has a dead­line of Feb­ru­ary 14, appli­cants will be asked to pro­vide a writ­ten sub­mis­sion, of no more than 1,000 words, to the fol­low­ing ques­tion.

Social media is fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing how com­pa­nies engage with their cus­tomers. It is fre­quent­ly argued that com­pa­nies need to “go social” or “go home”, yet many com­pa­nies are uncer­tain about how to adapt to this new social real­i­ty.  Choose an indus­try that, in your view, has not cap­i­tal­ized on the oppor­tu­ni­ties or pre­pared for the threats pre­sent­ed by social media and dis­cuss both the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats fac­ing com­pa­nies in this indus­try.

For the sec­ond round, the sub­mis­sions ranked in the top 100 will be asked to present via video to a pan­el of judges for no more than 15 min­utes.

These top 100 fin­ish­ers will all be invit­ed to the Prob­lem Solv­ing Chal­lenge week­end to be held at the Rot­man School in Toron­to on March 28 & 29. Par­tic­i­pants will be assigned to an “exec­u­tive team” to present their find­ings to senior rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the School as well as indus­try.

In order to be eli­gi­ble for awards, par­tic­i­pants must be accept­ed to the 2014 intake of the Rot­man Full-Time MBA Pro­gram. Those who are inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing who have not yet sub­mit­ted appli­ca­tions to Rot­man are required to ver­i­fy their eli­gi­bil­i­ty by pro­vid­ing a résumé and a GMAT score along with their ini­tial sub­mis­sion for the com­pe­ti­tion.

Com­plete details, includ­ing reg­is­tra­tion are online.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool