Message from the Area Coordinator
Dear UTD Finance Alumni,
It seems that we were in shorts and T-shirts just a week ago and, in the blink of an eye, we have winter weather in Dallas. While hot summers here are a nuisance, winter in Dallas is nice. The sunny blue skies with occasional snow make it perfect for outdoor activities. I hope it brings back fond memories of your fun days at The University of Texas at Dallas.
This fall, for the first time, enrollment at the Naveen Jindal School of Management surpassed 10,000. New enrollment in the MS Finance program also has returned to normal. Our Graduate Financial Management Council (GFMC) organized a very successful second MS Finance Alumni Networking Event with participation from more than 80 current students and alumni. It was a wonderful opportunity for students to make connections and learn from our alumni about building a successful career. It also was a excellent time for GFMC members to showcase their leadership and organizational skills.
There is some more good news to share. Three of our Finance students, one from the BS Finance program and two from the MS Finance program, represented UTD in the Team Finals of the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge and won third place. Also, our UTD Finance team placed in the top three in the 2022 CME Group University Trading Challenge.
I hope you and your family are doing well. Please reach out to us and share your fond memories and experiences. We invite you to come back to visit us soon and wish you and your loved ones an enjoyable and safe 2023!
Dr. Harold Zhang
Professor, Finance and Managerial Economics
Area Coordinator, Finance and Managerial Economics
Naveen Jindal School of Management
Recent Happenings
UTD Finance Team Wins Third Place in the Global Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge
This fall semester, the University of Arizona hosted the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge. Participating students of all levels (undergraduate, graduate and high school) and backgrounds (not just finance and business majors) learned more about Excel, financial modeling, data analysis and business analytics. The competition offered a prize pool of $30,000 and students highlighted their skills to potential employers, including EY, BDO and Alvarez & Marsal. The challenge took place in three rounds:
- Round 1 (Oct. 6-9/virtual): Students chose two hours in which to finish their tasks.
- Round 2 (Oct. 15/virtual): Students tested their skills by solving real-world Excel modeling tasks during a specified two-hour window.
- Round 3 (Dec. 3/in person): Best scoring students and teams traveled to Tucson, Arizona, to compete, culminating in a live esports final on ESPNU (as recently seen on ESPN2 and YouTube).
Through the first two rounds of the competition, Bhatt Pranjal and Garima Gupta from the MS Finance program and Thomas Ewing from the BS Finance program were among the top Excel-modeling college students in the world. They were selected to represent UTD in the team finals of the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge on Dec. 3 in Tucson.
In the final round of competition, each team was given several modeling challenges to work on concurrently, which demanded effective and efficient teamwork. Based on the performances in the morning rounds, only four teams were selected to progress to the afternoon competition. Our UTD Finance team was one of the four teams.
After going through a 30-minute Excel esports battle like those hosted by the Finance Modeling World Cup on YouTube that afternoon, the UTD Finance team took third place.
Dr. Hiro Nishi, director of the BS Finance program, accompanied the team and observed the whole final challenge day.
“It is literally a ‘competition’ among best students, and there was a lot of energy at the Arizona Esports Arena,” Nishi said. “I am very proud of them!”
Ewing said that all the team members were exhilarated and proud of their achievement.
“The Microsoft Excel Collegiate Competition was a fantastic experience,” he said. “It walked me through fundamental and advanced skills in Microsoft Excel that I will use in the future, as well as current industry trends through a seminar with the global corporation Alvarez & Marsal.
“The competition also allowed me to meet so many talented people like my teammates, Garima Gupta and Pranjal Bhatt, who more than demonstrated their skills and were instrumental in our success at finals. This experience was invaluable as it enabled me to learn important skills, meet incredible people and learn industry trends I can grow toward.”
Gupta echoed Thomas’ excitement.
“This is a huge accomplishment for us, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to compete at such a platform,” she said. “As a student, I have always been interested in technology and have always been drawn to the power and versatility of MS-Excel.
“In the competition, I was able to showcase my skills in a variety of tasks, including data analysis, financial modeling, data visualization and formula creation. It was an exhilarating experience to connect and network with the community of Excel enthusiasts and develop new skills. I am grateful to everyone who supported me along the way. I am excited to continue honing my Excel skills and am looking forward to future opportunities!”
Bhatt, who graduated this fall and will join Houlihan Lokey in January, said that he was impressed by the difficulty and variety of problems in the preliminary rounds — ranging from Leveraged Buyout (LBO) model to nonfinancial games.
“My favorite moment during the competition was when we got to know about steering through the preliminaries and representing UTD in the finals,” Bhatt said. “As expected, the final at the Arizona Esports Arena was highly competitive; however, our team won third place in a nail-biting finish after scoring 250 points in a matter of a few seconds. Overall, the entire competition proved to be a great learning experience for me. I would totally recommend that my fellow students at UTD participate in such competitions.”
UTD Team Wins Third Place in the CME Group University Trading Challenge
Approximately 500 teams from 208 schools representing 23 countries participated the 2022 CME Group University Trading Challenge from Oct. 2-28.
The UTD team was formed by Bigyan Devkota, a dual MS Finance/MS ITM student; Alisha Mumbrawala, an MS ITM student; and Abhishek Pokhrel, an MS Finance Technology and Analytics student. Devkota acted as team lead, and Dr. Carolyn Reichert, director of the MS Finance program, joined the team as faculty advisor.
The challenge is a virtual electronic trading competition that allows students to experience the excitement, energy and decision-making environment of real-time trading. Participants learn hands-on skills for trading futures. The teams consist of three to five members from the same university and each must elect a student leader. Teams can participate on a student-led team or in cooperation with a faculty advisor.
After a nearly one-month intensive competition, the UTD team placed third out of the 491 teams across the world. Each team member was awarded a $1,000 cash prize and invited to attend CME Group’s Day of Market Education on Dec. 5 in Chicago. The students had an in-depth look at the futures industry and global financial marketplace through presentations from industry experts.
Devkota and Mumbrawala attended the forum. Pokhrel was not able to attend due to his study-schedule conflicts, but he shared his experiences from the challenge.
“We worked as a group to come up with different strategies in planning our trades along with the proper timing for entries and exits,” he said. “This was an internationally held competition against a large group of competitors. We were given an account with $500,000 balance, which we were able to generate a return of over 3.4 times our starting balance before the end of the competition. I’m excited to share this educational accomplishment along with my team.”
Alumni Corner
In her final semester at UTD, Riddhima Agarwal received the 2022-2023 RENEW Scholarship from the Real Estate Network Empowering Women (RENEW). The scholarship was awarded based on her academic and professional experiences and how she created an impact in society. Read more about her accomplishment on Inside Jindal.
Cody Olschwang started his Bachelor of Science in Finance in fall 2017. During his time at the Jindal School, he completed six internships, founded two organizations, was president of three organizations and a member of the Professional Program in Finance, and participated in the Colloquium for the Advancement of Free-Enterprise Education. After graduating, he worked at Cambridge Associates as an investment analyst for about a year and a half and recently joined Meketa Investment Group as an investment analyst.
“My advice for being successful in finance comes down to two key ideas: who you know and what you know,” he said. “If an individual has done both well, they will be successful. Who one knows is determined by one’s network. What one knows is determined by what one learned in school and the professional experience one has. Therefore, it is important to constantly expand one’s network and capabilities. It is especially important to take advantage of networking as an undergraduate because, once one graduates, networking will become substantially harder as many will assume that they are only talking to them with the intention of getting a job.”
Olschwang recently published his first book, Mainline Business Cycle Theory.
“During my undergraduate, I became convinced that there needed to be a more robust discussion about the causes and nature of business cycles,” he said. “Individuals who engaged with the subject seemed to largely find a theory that fits with their worldview, then they would defend it as if it was their child. Often, this led to individuals talking past each other and not being willing to listen to others.
“My book is designed to propose a new business cycle theory to reignite that discussion. The book lays out the economic tradition it is a part of, an in-depth analysis of the theory and its components, and provides extensive data and historical analysis to demonstrate the empirical validity of the theory. My aim in publishing this book is to both propose a new business cycle theory and to reignite the debate over business cycle theory with the hope of inspiring a new wave of diligent research on the subject.”
There was also a deep moral concern that drove Olschwang to publish this work. Often, he stated, individuals consider business cycles to focus on “mere abstractions,” such as GDP, inflation and the unemployment rate, but business cycles have a real human cost.
“Many individuals took their own lives during the Great Depression because of the crisis,” he said. “Many individuals have been thrust into poverty because of these crises. If we stop the debate on business cycle theory, if we give up the quest to ensure a more efficient economic order, there are real humans on the other side of the calculation that we are abandoning.”
Upcoming Events
For MS in Finance chat session and online Information Session schedules, visit the Finance at UT Dallas website.
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