Name the relationship before you write a bullet
A case competition is a judged student project. The EY/KU National Business Challenge is a KU competition supported by EY, and the ISM Global Case Competition is an ISM event. Neither source calls participation an internship with the sponsor. Point72’s National Case Competition likewise asks students to research and pitch an investment idea; entering the competition is separate from holding a Point72 job.
| What happened | Supported description | Do not claim | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered but did not complete a case | Registration only; usually omit from experience | Participant, finalist or project result | |
| Completed and submitted a judged case | Competition name, case question, your work and submission | Employer internship or a result you did not earn | |
| Advanced or received an official award | The exact announced stage or award plus the work behind it | An individual award when the organizer awarded the team |
Place completed work under Projects, Competitions or Activities unless you actually held a separate employment position. Use the official event name and the year or cycle you entered. Do not turn a sponsor logo into an employer name on your application.
Choose evidence that resembles the internship work
An investment-research applicant can explain the company research, thesis and defense of a Point72-style stock pitch. A business-operations applicant may have more to show from a KU-style business case: alternatives considered, a recommendation and the calculation or research that changed it. An ISM supply-management case can show how a team weighed service, cost and supplier risk. These examples describe the organizers’ case formats, not a guarantee that every entrant completed the same work.
Read the actual internship responsibilities next. If the role asks for analysis, name the question and method you used. If it asks for collaboration, explain how your work affected the team decision. Do not use “strategic” or “data-driven” as substitutes for an artifact a reviewer could inspect.
Write one bullet around your contribution and its limit
Use this structure, replacing every bracket with a fact from your own record: “Analyzed [specific question] for [named competition]; used [method and evidence] to recommend [decision]; presented [your part] to [actual audience or judging stage].” If you have no supported numerical result, do not add one. A recommendation that was tested or challenged is a useful result even when the team did not win.
Keep the organizer and team context in the heading, then use the bullet for what you personally did. “Built the cost comparison and defended the supplier-risk assumption” communicates more than “worked on a winning presentation” when the former is your real contribution. A hypothetical case output is not a client deliverable or measured commercial impact.
- Name the problem and the organizer’s event accurately.
- Identify the analysis, writing, build or presentation you owned.
- State the decision or artifact; add a stage or award only after official confirmation.
- Keep any team result labelled as a team result.
Separate team achievement from individual ownership
KU prefers four-person teams for its Challenge; ISM permits teams of up to four and requires an advisor. Those structures make a team result plausible, but they do not tell an employer which teammate did the modeling, research, writing or final answer. Keep a short contribution record while the work is fresh: task, evidence you gathered, decision you changed, feedback you used and what teammates owned.
If the organizer announces a finalist or prize result, use its exact wording and date. If it has not announced the result, describe the submitted work without forecasting an award. A judge’s comment can inform an interview story, but do not present informal feedback as an official ranking.
Keep enough of the artifact to defend it in an interview
Save the permitted final deck or memo, a source list, your own calculations and one note about what you would revise. In an interview, explain the original question, the assumption the team tested, the tradeoff and how the answer changed. If the case rules restrict sharing, summarize your method instead of uploading the prompt or another team’s confidential material.
A portfolio entry can show a small public-safe excerpt and your role. It should not imply that an organizer adopted the recommendation or that an employer used the analysis. The same boundary applies when an event is sponsored by a well-known firm.
Check the application before you make the competition central
Use the posting as the relevance test. If it asks for software engineering, a business-case award may be a collaboration example while a tested code project remains stronger technical evidence. If it asks for investment research, the investment thesis and defense may deserve the first bullet. Do not delay an open, qualified application to wait for a future competition result.
Before submitting, compare the event name, cycle, stage and award in your résumé against your confirmation email or organizer announcement. Then write one short interview story about a decision you actually made rather than repeating the event description. The named event formats here come from organizer records checked September 23, 2026; this article does not assert that a later application window or prize is still available.