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Fast Money MBA Challenge
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Rules of the Game
Four students from the UCLA Anderson School of Management are competing in the CNBC business game show “Fast Money MBA Challenge.” Here is how the game is played.• UCLA is competing against seven other business schools from around the country, including:
• MIT Sloan School of Management
• NYU Leonard N. Stern School of Business
• McCombs School of Business at University of Texas at Austin
• Columbia Business School
• Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
• University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
• Yale School of Management
• The tournament will play out over four episodes. It is a traditional bracket format consisting of three rounds.
The first qualifying round consisted of trivia, and half of the teams were eliminated, leaving four. The second round, airing Aug. 15, will also be determined by trivia games, and two of the four remaining teams will be eliminated, leaving the finalists to battle it out on Aug. 22 in the final round. The winner of the final trivia round will receive $110,000 of fake money to invest, and the runner-up will receive $100,000 to invest. The winner of the game show will be determined based upon the performance of their stocks.
• The winning team will receive $200,000 to split among the contestants for educational expenses.
SOURCE: CNBC Web site
On game show, Anderson students mean business
Forget football or basketball – UCLA has a new team to root for.
Last Wednesday was the premiere of the CNBC business game show titled “Fast Money MBA Challenge,” featuring teams of business students from eight business schools, including the UCLA Anderson School of Management, who will compete for a $200,000 prize.
Heading the squad was UCLA team captain Umi Mehta, who, along with teammates Bryan Applequist, Martin Key and Nital Patel, led UCLA to victory in the first round against the University of Chicago.
“Business school is all about working in teams, and this was the perfect opportunity,” said Mehta.
The team was chosen by fellow business student Adam Epstein, who has been on a CNBC business game show previously.
Patel said most of the contestants had been acquainted before the show, and they were selected to create a team with diverse backgrounds in business, from finance to accounting to marketing.
The show consists of trivia and is set up in a bracket format commonly used in sports tournaments.
The competition was filmed at CNBC studios in New Jersey in July, so the competitors were on hand for a viewing party on Wednesday evening hosted by the Anderson School.
During the hour-long trivia show, Yale School of Management battled the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and won, and then UCLA triumphed over the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business with trivia questions such as “What grocery chain carries the 365 Organic brand?” (UCLA gave the correct answer, which is Whole Foods.)
The speed round, where contestants buzz in to answer, was the round in which contestants were put in the hot seat, wagering money for their team and answering questions individually.
At the party, the contestants walked around, casually chatting with friends and peers from Anderson.
The conversations came to a pause when the UCLA team came on the screen, and people enjoyed food and drink, cheering enthusiastically for every question answered correctly and booing when Chicago nearly pulled ahead toward the end.
This also means the team already knows the results of the trivia rounds, which may explain why the contestants seemed relaxed and calm during the party.
Though the results of the trivia rounds were determined weeks ago, the winner of the entire show will be revealed on the final episode. The winner of the final trivia round received $110,000 of fictitious money to invest in stocks and the runner up received $100,000. The winner will be determined based on the performance of these investment portfolios.
Patel said because the majority of the show is based on trivia-style questions, there was minimal preparation required of them, and they just enjoyed themselves and had fun with the game.
Contestants agreed that it was strange seeing themselves on TV, and Applequist said many memorable moments for the contestants ended up being edited out of the show, such as Key waving and interacting with the audience.
After their segment aired, Key fielded questions from viewers in a live online chat, which is part of the interactive features on the show’s Web site and will occur again after next Wednesday’s segment.
Richard Rodner, associate dean of marketing and communications at Anderson, said he was pleased that the contestants are publicly representing the college.
“We’re all proud that we were asked to participate along with seven other top-tier business schools from across the country,” he said.
In the end, however, Patel said the experience was mostly an entertaining opportunity and is not likely to have an impact on her work or studies.
“It was just really fun, a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.
The championship round, hosted by “Fast Money” host Dylan Ratigan, will air live from the NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square on Aug. 22 on CNBC.
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