The KWHS Investment Competition is an initiative of The Wharton School, which was a 12-week investment competition where each team was responsible for managing a portfolio of $100,000 in virtual cash using the OTIS online trading system. We are supposed to make and maintain the virtual cash portfolio of an investor ( Jack Abraham ) through OTIS, which is an online trading system. Business Management is one of my career options so I participated in this competition to understand more of the practical world of business with a team of 8 other members. The learning outcomes that I catered to in this activity are :
Learning Outcome 1 (Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth): I plan to study Business Management further in my life and that is why I chose this activity and that has really helped me. I had very less knowledge of the investment background but after I experienced that what investment is all about, I identified that I grasped the knowledge about these concepts quickly and I also found that to be very interesting so I think that I have quite a good hand in this field.
Through this activity, I understood that knowing your strengths is very important because that helps us polish our skills in a particular area. In this case, also identification of my strength has motivated and developed self-confidence in me.
Learning Outcome 2 (Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process): There were many challenges that we faced during this competition. The first one was that the school registered the wrong email id of our group because of which we never received the messages from the competition management so we had to maintain communication with other groups and advisors to get the all the information on time so that was a bit tough.
Also, we not only just faced challenges but also developed new skills about the investment sector and that will surely help all of us sometime in our future. I believe that trying new things helps us developed new and more skills and that is quite necessary for development.
Learning Outcome 3 (Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience): All of our group members were totally new to the investment background so we had to plan everything wisely. The organisation part in this activity was well sorted for us because we did that at the beginning itself. We faced some difficulties in the planning because of the clashing opinions of every member but gradually as we became familiar with the concepts and improved communication between the group, our planning improved and that surely helped us.
I have learned that planning improves the performance because if in the beginning only we focus on our goal, then that helps us work hard and achieve the goal successfully.
Learning Outcome 4 (Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences): This was a 3-month long competition and we had our submissions in between this duration. Some of our group members also had their SATs which created some issues about when to meet and completing the work on time but perseverance was something that kept us going.
Perseverance is something which I was not really good at but through this activity, I have become a lot more perseverant because we had to adjust in some things and manage everything properly only to get a successful position in this competition. After this, I believe that problems come and go but going through this and being persistent makes your work to reach success.
Learning Outcome 5 (Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively): We had to work in a team of 9 members. I never find working collaboratively difficult because what I believe is that number of hands divide the work and make it easier. In this activity also we were a team of 9 members so in the beginning so it seemed that we will easily divide the work. We divided the work in a way that everyone was given some companies and they had to research and invest on their companies so there were some people who just did not do the work at all and some who did but not completely. So, dealing with them was something tough but the other members were very supportive and that is the reason why we successfully completed our work.
After this activity what I believe is that working in a team creates synergy and that is very beneficial, at least in cases like these where you have efficient work to be done.
Learning Outcome 7 (Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions): Ethics concern an individual’s moral judgements about right and wrong. Decisions taken by an organisation highly decide the morals of the organisation.
In this case, also the team had to decide ethically everything. Most of our team members had contacts with investing experts or guides but we chose not to use their help. Using their help would have hindered our own learnings. We participated to develop our knowledge in a new field so we totally understood the choices we had and took action that was beneficial to us and was morally correct.
I think that the ethical issues here affected us indirectly because we did not intend to cheat with any particular company, even if we cheated we would have done to serve our purpose of winning. I felt that ethics are very much required and the morals need to be followed because they teach us to follow the right path in the long run.
The learner profile attributes that I developed in this activity are knowledgeable because we got to know something which we have listened always, but this was a practical learning of it for us, risk takers because we had to invest in different companies without a minimal knowledge of its background and we also explored new ideas and innovate new strategies so that was something which was quite challenging, and communicators because we worked in a team so we had to collaborate effectively and listen to perspectives of other individuals in our team.
In all, the experience of participating in a competition like this was a very nurturing experience for me that will always help me in the future. 
