Casey Spoden, a full-time Iowa M.B.A. student at the Tippie College of Business, was part of a team that won the PepsiCo Invitational M.B.A. Business Competition at TCU’s Neeley School of Business in September.

“I had never participated in a case competition before, so I was excited to learn about the process and get practice at solving problems in a finite amount of time,” says Spoden, who won $7,000 for being part of the winning team.

M.B.A. students from 13 universities participated for cash prizes and possible job opportunities with PepsiCo. Students were randomly assigned two teammates, and each team had to do its own case study and present it to the judges.

Spoden attributed her team’s success to the different backgrounds and the varied talents and experiences between the three of them.

“My team was very collaborative from the start—we analyzed our case separately and came together with lots of ideas and quickly discussed the pros and cons to pick the best ones,” she says.

For M.B.A. students like Spoden, case competitions are important because they give real-life examples of what it would be like working in a business like PepsiCo.