Extreme accounting pays off

Five IU Kelley School of Business students won $10,000 at the xTREME Games, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ tax and accounting competition, in New York City this weekend.

Shannon Anderson, the PwC recruiter for the IU campus, said 84 schools competed in a contest that isn’t so much technical but more about the big picture.

Each team consists of five students. Two must be sophomores, one must be a junior, and the other two can be in any year of school. Each year has its own requirements for eligibility.

IU’s team included sophomore Brian Benhart, senior Ross Bomholt, junior Courtney Schnaus and brothers senior Tyler Jochim and sophomore Zach Jochim. The faculty member mentors were Mike Tiller, the chair of Graduate Accounting, and accounting instructor Chris Cook.

“We had what we call a mission meeting, which was hosted at Indiana University the last Friday in October, and that is when we present the case to the team,” Anderson said. “They gave them a spiral-bound case study that was written by someone in the PwC national office. IU had 18 teams, and they had two weeks to work together in their teams to come up with a solution. They came back on Nov. 12 to present to a panel of judges.”

The team’s case was finding a solution to working with the international financial reporting standard.

Their presentation, which was taped, had to be no longer than 12 minutes. The winning team for IU then competed with the winners of the other 83 schools.

The teams were competing for either of the two divisions, xTAX, short for “Extreme Tax,” and xACT for “Extreme Accounting.”

Forty-three teams, one of which was from IU, competed to be one of the top five finalists for xTREME Accounting. More than 4,500 students competed nationwide.

“We practiced for 50 to 60 hours, putting in a lot of effort and time,” Tyler Jochim said.

After each team presented, they found out they had lost to University of Illinois.

“We were the first to present this morning, and I thought we did a tremendous job, and obviously we came off a little bit short, but we are very proud of our team’s effort,” Tyler Jochim said.

Even if they didn’t win, each team that made it to the national finals won $10,000, on top of $1,000 they received for winning at IU.

Tyler Jochim plans to do quite a bit with his prize money.

“I’m sure I’m going to have a little bit more fun this semester, but I’m graduating here in May, so I’m definitely thinking about making that down payment on an apartment and hopefully getting a nice new vehicle in the near future. So starting to save up for that kind of stuff,” he said.