Recently, the 11th Asia-Pacific Business Schools Desert Adventure was held in Tengger Desert, Alxa, Inner Mongolia. More than 4,000 players from 113 colleges and universities took part in the competition, with the scale at an all-time high. NEU’s MBA team won the “Golden Sand Gull Award”, the highest honor in the competition, and it is the first “Golden Sand Gull Award” that MBA schools in the Northeast region won.
The game was in the form of group competition. On the basis of previous events, the track setting was re-optimized and team members' equipment was upgraded. There were four groups and three routes in this competition, including Super Group A (99km), Group A (70km), Group B (70km), and Group C (35km). NEU’s MBA team has participated in this competition since 2017. Every year, potential seed players would be selected from new MBA students. After rigorous training and testing, they were included as the team members. NEU’s MBA team has been faced with many difficulties and challenges such as postponement of the competition and repeated epidemic. After nearly two years of meticulously preparation including road running training, mountain training and desert training, as well as testing, selection and comprehensive evaluation, 29 members, including Lan Bo, a teacher from the School of Business Administration of NEU and a member of Super Group A, were finally determined to participate in this competition.
In the competition, the members of NEU’s MBA team experienced the severe challenges brought by the great difference between running on sand dunes and running on flat ground. They tried their best to refresh their own performance and that of the team. They made concerted effort to challenge themselves and finally finished the competition successfully within the specified time and won the “Golden Sand Gull Award”, the highest honor in the competition. They have fully manifested NEU’s motto of Striving constantly for improvement, behaving in conformity with truth, and made a tribute to the centennial anniversary of NEU with their practical actions.
The Asia-Pacific Business Schools Desert Adventure was held for the first time in 2012. So far, more than 100 top business schools in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the United States have participated in the competition. More than 10,000 MBA students have directly taken part in the competition, covering more than 500,000 business school MBA groups in the Asia-Pacific region. Officially certified by World Record Certification (WRCA) as the Largest Desert Trek Challenge in the world, it provides a cross-university and cross-region exchange platform for MBA elite students.
