February 25-27, four Waukee APEX student associates and Financial and Insurance instructor Jesse Hunt attended the first annual Modeling the Future Competition in New York City, New York. Two of the Waukee APEX teams, known as Alpha and Bravo, were selected out of 54 teams for the finals.
Teams had to present a 30 page extensive report that explained the importance of self-driving vehicles to a group of professional actuaries, which are mathematicians who analyze and measure statistics and predict an impact.
Team Bravo, which consisted of student associates Quinn Schroeder and Skye Seo, won fourth place and a $5,000 scholarship in a close final scoring process.
“I couldn’t procrastinate; I had to make a structured schedule for myself to get things done in a timely manner,” said Seo, “I know these time management skills will help prepare me for college.”
Tyler Blaess and Rohan Gupta, who made up team Alpha, won fifth place.
“I learned a lot from being a part of a project that wasn’t in my comfort zone. I didn’t have a lot of actuary experience so going to finals was unexpected,” said Gupta.
Both teams focused on providing an engaging presentation of the relationships between past and present statistics. The experience allowed the student associates to create new connections and further develop valuable career skills.
“I could go on forever about how APEX has impacted me. I’m a huge supporter of project-based learning,” said Gupta. “Since this project was for a client, we had to make a timeline and set deadlines and meet them. We had the opportunity to teach ourselves and problem solve instead of learning in a traditional classroom where directions for assignments are given to you step-by-step.”
