Biz Quiz team members (from left) Teddy Koch ('07), Matt Mahon ('08) and Peter Ayoub ('07) spent two months in weekly study and planning sessions preparing for the Fisher Biz Quiz competition.

Biz Quiz

Calloway team takes second in business competition

A team of three Calloway students recently took second place at the first Fisher Biz Quiz National Challenge, sponsored by Nationwide and The Wall Street Journal and held at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University.

Seniors Peter Ayoub from New Canaan, CT, and Teddy Koch from Lewisville, NC, and junior Matt Mahon from Edina, MN, all finance majors, competed with ten other teams from undergraduate schools across the country in this fast-paced challenge that tested students' knowledge of current business issues.

The event began with an individual round where students responded to 60 questions drawn from the Personal section of The Wall Street Journal. In the team rounds that followed, clickers were used to answer questions which were displayed on screens and read by the moderator, Ronald Alsop, a news editor for The Wall Street Journal. The three top-scoring schools, Penn State, Michigan State, and Wake Forest, continued to the final round of the competition where they competed to answer questions in a quiz-show format with the teams buzzing in to answer questions Jeopardy style.

"When the finalists were announced," said Ayoub, "the three of us looked at each other, smiled, and headed up to the stage. We were neck in neck with Michigan State through the final round but didn't buzz in fast enough for the last three questions."

All questions were taken from stories that appeared in The Wall Street Journal newspapers between September 1 and October 31. For one last study blitz in Ohio, Koch packed a suitcase with the newspapers the group had been stockpiling for two months. The day before the competition, the team gathered in Koch's hotel room, spread The Wall Street Journals out on the floor, and reviewed until breaking for lunch.

"When we returned to the room after lunch, we found that the cleaning staff had thrown out our 50 or so newspapers," says Mahon. Despite the panic at finding their study guides covered in coffee grounds, they rescued the surviving copies and used the online edition to fill in the gaps.

The loss of the papers was a minor inconvenience as the team was well prepared ahead of time, having spent September and October with newsprint-stained fingers-meeting weekly to review notes and quiz each other. "A lot of prep work was done individually just in reading all of The Wall Street Journal every day. Our greatest challenge, though, was simply not knowing what to expect." Ayoub said.

"We often talked strategy at our meetings and about how to read the newspapers effectively and accurately. We wanted the sessions to be about more than memorizing details, so we tried to relate different stories to each other." Koch added.

Going into the competition, Mahon described one of the team's greatest strengths as the chemistry between the group members. Ayoub, Koch, and Mahon have a self-described passion for business, and part of the excitement of participating in the Biz Quiz event was putting their knowledge to the test.

And while the second-place finish and the $1,500 prize were satisfying, equally rewarding was meeting the competition and enjoying an opportunity to spend time with their faculty advisor, Professor Rob Bliss.

"The students were great," said Bliss, "They worked very hard and impressed a great many people." As a result of what Bliss describes as the team's sportsmanship, demeanor, and comportment, an executive from Nationwide indicated she plans to turn more attention to recruiting students from the Calloway School.

The Fisher Biz Quiz was designed by the students and the undergraduate program at Ohio State to be a different, classy, and fun-oriented event with a solid business angle. H. Rao Unnava, Fisher's associate dean for undergraduate programs, says The Wall Street Journal emerged as the best source for questions because of the respect the publication commands.

Dean of the Calloway School, Jack Wilkerson, agrees. "The Fisher Quiz's focus on The Wall Street Journal was particularly appealing. Anything we can do to encourage our students to stay up-to-date in their knowledge of current business events and activities is a good thing."

Koch, who has enjoyed reading The Wall Street Journal for many years, says his mother often accused him of procrastinating when he was reading the paper. But now he says, "I can tell her I've been studying."

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