A team of first-year UT graduate students won the Texas Shoot-Out, a real estate competition hosted April 3 by the North Texas chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.
Teams from Baylor University, Southern Methodist University and Texas A&M University, among others throughout Texas, tested their commercial real estate skills at the Dallas Country Club. Seven teams with four to six members each participated in the competition.
Teams evaluated a series of real-life real estate scenarios and had three days to present their solutions to a panel of real estate executives.
UT team member Ryan Childs said the scenarios dealt with sale-leasebacks and corporate consolidations.
"The competitions are fantastic, because they allow you to apply what you've learned to real-life scenarios," Childs said. "The scenarios were old cases that involved Google and Goldman Sachs, but we didn't know it at the time."
Prior to the Shoot-Out, the Longhorn team participated in a national real estate competition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in February and placed first.
White said companies use competitions like the Shoot-Out as recruiting tools to find top real estate students.
"People already knew that we placed at nationals, so after we presented our solutions, companies just attacked us with their business cards," White said.
The UT team won the $10,000 top prize over some teams composed of older MBA students with more experience. The team members will keep 60 percent of the reward, while 40 percent will be paid to the University.
"I think I'm going to buy myself a new set of golf clubs," White said.
Other UT team members included Scott Humphreys, Bryan Kaminski, Joesph B. Longino III and Michael Searls.
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