Sitting in the room with 60 other people before the competition Cade Harrison thinks over what he’s going to do to make this competition better than last year where he won state and ranked high in the national contest. 

“I was expecting a lot of people to be doing it because it’s one of the more common competitions because it’s more of a finance-based test space,” Harrison said. “This one is a lot more common than some of the coding ones.”

Business Professionals of America (BPA) is a national organization for students interested in pursuing careers in business-related fields. The organization has over 55,000 members in over 23 states, helps with many business-related jobs, and looks good on college applications and resumes. 

“I got into business schools that I would probably not have gotten into because of the competition that I did for BPA,” Harrison said. “Then also it also helped me understand more things that I want to do for future careers.” 

Harrison placed high in this competition last year and has several goals for the upcoming national competition. 

“I honestly just hope to place as high as I can on the national competition, because last year I placed exactly in the middle of the people who competed,” Harrison said. “And so hopefully I’m hoping to do slightly better this year than last.”

Imaan Dadabhoy is another competitor in a different section of BPA. Dadabhoy enjoys the experience of being in the Fundamentals of Web Design section. 

“The competition is really fun, it can be a little stressful but then like afterward if you don’t have anything else to do you get to do whatever you want,” Dadabhoy said. 

Fundamentals of Web Design consists of tests that prepare you to make websites for commercial use, the section also prepares students to work with different web texts and graphics.

“You’re given a prompt to make like a website and then you make it the judges score you on the technical parts and then they score your presentation of the website,” Dadabhoy said. “In regionals, we placed first and then I think state we place other fourth or fifth.”

Wendy Thomson is Harrison’s first-year BPA sponsor who has the responsibility of promoting the kids into the area she thinks fits them best. 

“I expected him to win state this year, once I found out that he went to Nationals, which is huge,” Thomson said. “His brother also went to nationals in the same category, I just think that’s an interesting fact, that between the two of them, they’ve both been to nationals.”

Thomson also gets to advise her club members on the colleges that are best for that category of BPA, along with supporting them and seeing the grow at competitions. The BPA club itself makes you much more admirable for the colleges and future jobs that you apply for, giving you a higher chance to get a job you’re passionate about.  

“I think he can accomplish anything he wants to but the university he’s looking at does not have his chapter of Business Professionals of America,” Thompson said. “So I encouraged him, if he goes there, to start his own chapter.” 

BPA has broad categories in the business world finance, health administration, digital communication and design are just a few of the many categories students can participate in. 

“I competed in competitions that were related to future careers that I find interesting,” Harrison said. “BPA is also a national organization so competing and advancing to nationals is looked well upon by colleges looking at business school applicants.”