COMPETITIONS (Web-Source)

•      Competitions play a role in motivating students to perform and excel and offer a lot more reward than just the winning prize. Competitions offer a chance for participants to gain substantial experience, showcase skills, analyze and evaluate outcomes and uncover personal aptitude. Competitions also encourage students to adopt innovative techniques and develop their ideas and skills.

The Importance of Competition and Its Role in Education:

•      Education and academic competitions are two most important ingredients of human life and these two have always been considered as important issues. In this article, I am going to discuss about the role of academic competitions in education as well as in student life. I begin with overview of education and competition.

•      Education:
All live forms on the earth need knowledge and skills for their survival and propagation. Knowledge and skills are transmitted genetically from generation to generation for most of the species, but in human, skills and knowledge are mostly depends on the education. Indeed, education is what makes human superior.

•      Competition:
There is no doubt education is secret key of human success and the roots of education lie on competition. A child is born without knowledge and skills, and they continuously participate in competitions every part of the life, developing skills and knowledge through a learning process.
A child competes in the school, college and university and finally he/she competes in his/her professional area. Actually human life is full of competitions.

•      Competition in education:
Education and completions are very closely related as competitions are put in education for the development of educational skills. Indeed, without competitions, we cannot imagine education. A student has to fight in admission tests and once he/she has passed, he/she admitted in the institution. Then the institution arranges several kinds of competitions that enhance the knowledge as well as skills of a student. The exam itself is a biggest competition where a student competes to surpass others.

Six Reasons to Participate in Student Competitions

•      1. Show your talent---Many students feel it is difficult to express their talents in school. Exams and group assignments do not always capture students’ unique skills or accurately measure the ability to apply skills to real-world problems. In contrast, many student competitions are based on solving “real” cases and problems.

•      2. Connect with top employers---Competitions can also be a way to connect with top employers, such as Google, Facebook or IBM, that are otherwise difficult to reach, in a setting that puts you and your skills in the spotlight. Regardless of your formal educational background, if you have the skills to win a competition, you have the ability to connect.

•      3. Build your résumé the fun way!---Rock stars are instantly recognizable because they are not afraid to show off their talents and embrace who they are. If you win a large competition, you can claim your own ‘rock star status’ in the talent recruitment community!Winning a couple of student competitions is a great way to stand out from the crowd and build your résumé, both the traditional way and via your social media profile. Show off your achievements on LinkedIn and Facebook. We assure you that the “Likes” will start rolling in, and job offers won’t be far behind.

•      4. Challenge yourself---Obviously, not everyone who enters the competition will win. However, even if you don’t receive any of the big prizes, you can still benefit from the opportunity to challenge yourself. You’ll learn new things and develop new skills – and even if you don’t win, you can still show what you gained from the experience, and talk about this in job applications and interviews.

•      5. Get help to realize your dream---Whether it’s starting your own business or studying abroad, competitions can help you realize your dream. If you are planning on starting a business but need capital, there are competitions where you can win startup funding for your business. Good examples are the Million Pound Startup Competition, RICE Business Plan Competition and the Global Social Venture Competition. Or, if you are running a worthwhile project, there are many award programs available that support your ideas, such as the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards and the Dell Education Challenge.Additionally, there are many student competitions where you can win fully funded trips to incredible destinations and events. Some examples are St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award, ISFiT (International Student Festival in Trondheim) and My Destination’s Biggest Baddest Bucket List.

•      6. Test your ideas---Finally, student competitions allow you to test your ideas to see how viable they are, in a risk-free environment where you are able to collect and incorporate feedback from peers and professionals. If you are committed to realizing your dreams, any time spent on fine-tuning your ideas is a great investment.