70% of Aralia Students Win Prizes in Business Competitions
1. What is the Conrad Innovation Challenge?
Participants work on year-long projects in a small team; together, they design an innovative, impactful solution to a significant, currently relevant global issue. Students create their own business deck, marketing strategy, prototype, and pitch. The Conrad Challenge is a rare, excellent chance for students to bring their creative ideas to life in a friendly, competitive environment outside of school. Students utilize and build on their creative problem-solving skills, teamwork, and public speaking abilities, thus making the Conrad Challenge an impressive extracurricular to add onto college applications.
2. How prestigious is the Conrad Challenge?
The Conrad Challenge is a prestigious extracurricular event, recognized by many well-known colleges and universities as an admirable accomplishment exemplifying a student’s hard work ethic, creativity, cohesive teamwork skills, innovative spirit, and dedication to doing good for the greater community. Conrad Challenge winners receive prizes from prestigious companies such as Dell Technologies and NASA, win large scholarship packages, and go on to patent their ideas and create real impact on the world.
Teams of high school students participating in the Conrad Challenge are mentored by experts in the field and gain access to an extraordinary network of accomplished alumni upon completion. The judging panels are known to be strict with their judging criteria, allowing students to gain insightful constructive criticism unparalleled in breadth and depth compared to other high school competitions.
3. How to win the Conrad Challenge
The Conrad Innovation Challenge has four stages:
- Stage 1: Activation Stage
- Register your team of 2-5 members. Your team can constitute students from other schools or even countries. Find a coach who’s an expert in the subject matter to help guide you along the way.
- Stage 2: Lean Canvas Stage
- Ideate challenges and solutions, pick your name and category, and craft your Lean Canvas where you answer 12 questions in under 40 words on your innovation, market, and business model.
- Stage 3: Innovation Stage ($499 entry fee due)
- Write your Innovation Brief answering 10 essential questions that will tell your story, describe your innovation and its impact, detail your progress, explain your market, and propose your business model (max 3,000 words). Film your Innovation Video, a 3-5 minute demonstration of your innovation. Build your website.
- Stage 4: Power Pitch Stage (Conrad Challenge Innovation Summit)
- Present your Power Pitch with an executive briefing deck to a judges’ panel and answer questions about your technology, your impact, your business model, and other topics.
4. Eligibility and Rules
Students compete in teams of 2 to 5 participants with a coach over the age of 18. This competition is open to students worldwide, and the challenge encourages participants to team up with students from other schools and even other countries. All participants must be 13-18 years old and in high school (or officially homeschooled). Students can repeatedly join in different years and resubmit ideas if they’ve made significant improvement.
5. Conrad Scholar and other Prizes
Conrad Innovation Challenge doesn’t offer cash prizes, and scholarship awards are only for a specific list of colleges.
Highest prize: Pete Conrad Scholar
Winners receive medallion, certificate, Dell Latitude Laptop, patent lawyer services valued at $20,000 to patent the idea, a New Product Market Feasibility Study valued at $1,500, exclusive connections to grant funding sources, $2,500 to attend summer entrepreneurship program Leangap, as well as access to other state of the art entrepreneurship programs such as The Western Union Foundation Fellowship and TKS.
Second highest prize: Finalist
- $25,000 per year to Menlo College
- $22,000 per year to Lewis & Clark College
- $15,000 per year to Clarkson University
- $10,000 per year to College of Charleston
- $2,500 per year to Florida Institute of Technology
- $1,000 to attend summer entrepreneurship program Leangap
Third highest prize: Conrad Innovator
- $20,000 per year to Menlo College
- $15,000 per year to Lewis & Clark College
- $12,000 per year to Clarkson University
- $10,000 per year to College of Charleston
- $2,500 per year to Florida Institute of Technology
Location: The first three stages are preformed virtually, and the fourth and final stage including the Conrad Innovation Challenge Summit is held in Houston, Texas at the Space Center Houston and NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Cost: For stages 1 and 2, there is no entry fee. Starting at stage 3, Innovation Stage, entry fee is $499.
Stage 1 Activation Stage due: November 1, 2024
Stage 2 Lean Canvas Stage due: November 1, 2024
Stage 3 Innovation Stage due: January 10, 2025
Stage 4 Power Pitch Stage (Summit) due: April 22 to April 25, 2025
Unlock Your Potential: Students in Our Business Competition Preparation Class Are More Likely to Secure Awards
6. How hard is the Conrad Challenge?
Hosted by The Conrad Foundation and Space Center Houston, the 2023-2024 season saw over 4,000 participants from 50+ countries, making it a very popular and competitive event among high school students and well-known among college admissions.
The Conrad Challenge’s main difficulty factor lies in a student team’s ability to think outside the box and create something that doesn’t already exist. This requires extensive market and competitive research within your product’s specific industry, and a very early head start to leave room for iteration. You’ll need guidance from experts in the entrepreneurship field to learn from the obstacles they faced along their journeys. Working on the Conrad Challenge alone with just your team will be very hard and won’t yield the best results. Reach out to interview users and professionals, get feedback from competition coaches experienced with the Conrad Challenge and similar business entrepreneurship competitions, and build an effective team.
The Conrad Challenge attracts a wide range of participants: some students use Legos to build a prototype, while other teams have access to state-of-the-art resources and cutting-edge technologies from top-ranking research university labs. Needless to say, those teams are the ones to win. To rival the best, you must have top-tier resources and competition coaches with a winning track record. Here’s where Aralia Education comes in!
7. Prepare for the Conrad Challenge with Aralia Education
Aralia Education’s competition coaches thoroughly prepare high school students for the Conrad Challenge to perform at their full potential! Our teachers are exclusively vetted from the nation’s top-ranking private high schools and universities. Students can take our classes 1:1 or in small groups for specialized attention from our teachers and hands-on work with resources of the highest standards. Contact us to learn how Aralia Education can help you!
