2015 Gabelli Consulting Cup

The pinnacle of sophomore year, or even your academic career for some, is the 1st Integrated Project in the Gabelli School of Business. As mentioned earlier in this blog, IP1 takes place your first semester of sophomore year for Gabelli students, and culminates in The Consulting Cup, formerly known as the Core Bowl.

What's at stake: The Consulting Cup & other awards 

The Consulting Cup is the final round of competition for the semester-long consulting project all Gabelli sophomores complete. The sophomore class is divided into 84 teams of 5 or 6 students, who are assigned a company that they must analyze, discover an opportunity for the company, and provide a full-blown implementation plan that they must then present at the end of the semester. The first round happens in December, and those presentations are recorded and shown to the deans and faculty to be narrowed down to the top six that will compete in the Consulting Cup. Whats at stake, you might ask? The winning team takes home $1,000 and gets their names engraved in the actual Gabelli Consulting Cup that is displayed in Hughes Hall on the Rose Hill Campus. The judges for the cup are also high-ranking business professionals, many with ties to Fordham, and all finalists get this excellent opportunity to network with them and prove they can fully analyze a company, create a solution, and effectively present it to a huge audience -- over 100 students, faculty members, and special guests.

My team and our Business Comm. Professor, Dr. LaMarque

My awesome team and I were lucky enough to make it to the finals this year. The company we were assigned was McDonald's, and our unique solution was a subsidiary brand that combined fast causal dining with technology and environmental sustainability. 

Though my team didn't take home first place and the $1,000, we managed to make second place -- which is still pretty impressive. From this experience we gained knowledge across all divisions of the business world, networked with individuals in the field, and made a long-lasting bond as a team that not only worked together but succeeded together.