Cornell places third at annual real estate challenge
Contact: Joe Schwartz
Phone: (607) 254-6235
Cell: (607) 351-4221
bjs54@cornell.edu
FOR RELEASE: Dec. 7, 2007
AUSTIN, Texas -- Cornell University students placed third in a National Real Estate Challenge that pitted teams from 16 top graduate schools in a realistic competition held at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. The Cornell team earned a spot in the final round of the competition, besting teams from Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Virginia and Wharton. In the final round, Cornell placed third overall, while teams from Northwestern and Stanford finished first and second, respectively.
"The competition was a fantastic opportunity to combine Cornell's learning environment with real-world challenges," said Daniel Lentz, a graduate student in Cornell's Program in Real Estate. "Actual deals are complex and have many different risks and compromises which must be considered."
Cornell's team was composed of students from JGSM and the Program in Real Estate (PRE). The Cornell team included Lentz, Zsofia Kondor (PRE), Brian Semel (PRE), Ramandeep Walia (JGSM), Benjamin Weissbourd (JGSM), and Rachel Wilson (PRE).
Each participating school was allowed one team of four to six graduate students, who studied a potential real estate investment scenario and then provided a 20-minute presentation about that case to a panel of real estate professionals. This year's case study at the competition was a hypothetical hospitality investment opportunity on behalf of a global real estate fund.
The case for this year's competition was distributed by co-sponsor Goldman Sachs & Co. and was judged by professionals from Goldman and other lead sponsors such as Bank of America, Credit Suisse, GE Real Estate, ING Clarion, The Lionstone Group, Morgan Stanley, Transwestern Investment Company, and Weingarten Realty Investory.
For more information about the Program in Real Estate at Cornell, visit: http://realestate.cornell.edu. For information about the Johnson Graduate School of Management, visit http://www.johnson.cornell.edu.
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