Juniors Kylash Krishnamurthy, Naman Sajwan and Siavash Yaghoobi waited with bated breath as the announcer walked to the center of the stage. Around them was a crowd of of students, each vying for the same honors.
Little did they know that in less than a minute, the announcer would say their names, announcing them as one of the top eight students competing in their event internationally.
Five students competed in the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Nashville, Tenn., as part of the business club DECA on April 23-26.
Students qualify for this conference by placing in the top four at the state conference or by placing in the top 25 Stock Market Game (SMG) teams from each of the four geographically split regions of the country.
Juniors Kylash Krishnamurthy, Naman Sajwan and Siavash Yaghoobi earned top eight at ICDC through the SMG. Sophomores Elora Pradhan and Mervi Tan qualified for ICDC after placing fourth at the state conference for Marketing Communications Team Decision Making (MTDM).
SMG is an online competition running from September to December, allowing ICDC qualifiers three months after December to prepare an 11-page paper about an investment project as well as a 15-minute presentation.
“While the competition is running, students are given the opportunity to invest in numerous types of securities in the stock market, and they have to maximize the returns on an initial cash balance of $100,000,” Sajwan said.
In MTDM, competitors prepare a speech for 30 minutes after studying the information provided in a case study. The speech lasts 10 minutes and is followed by a 5-minute time period for the judge to ask questions.
“The speeches are usually judged by different marketing executives, sometimes the ones from the case study,” Tan said.
Aside from the time spent preparing for the competition and actually competing, the students found themselves spending quality time with each other and exploring the hotel.
“I had never actually been to Nashville before, so this was a super cool opportunity to get out there,” Tan said.
She also described the strong sense of camaraderie that she felt with fellow students.
“We really didn’t know anyone else outside of the Saratoga group, so we ended up spending a lot of time together,” Tan said. “I even had a key card to the boys’ room so that I could wake them up on time every morning. They’re really grumpy first thing in the morning.”
For the duration of the trip, many of the experiences made ICDC similar to an extended slumber party.
The night before their presentation, the SMG team stayed up all night finalizing the poster board they used to present their investments.
“I spent so much time with my teammates and learned quite a bit about stocks,” Krishnamurthy said. “At the beginning of the competition, I didn’t know anything about analyzing stocks, but by the end, I felt pretty comfortable and knew that there was actually a way to be successful with it.”