FDIC Academic Challenge Guidelines and Permissions

Guidelines

• Participation is open to all undergraduate students attending U.S. colleges and 

universities.

• Each team must consist of 4-5 students and have a faculty advisor. The role of the faculty 

advisor is to assist students in thinking through the material and to interact with FDIC as 

needed.

• Individual colleges and universities may have multiple teams submit responses. A student 

may be a member of at most one team. A faculty advisor may advise any number of teams.

• All participants must adhere to the Code of Conduct, as listed on the webpage for this 

year’s competition.

• Written submissions should be limited to 6 pages of text, plus an executive summary of up 

to 1 page. References and up to 6 pages of figures and tables do not count against this 

limit. All figures and tables should be self-contained, referenced in the text, and included 

at the end of the document. Text should be single spaced in Times New Roman font, 12 pt, 

with 1” margins on all sides of the page.

• Written submissions should not contain the name of the team’s college or university.

• Written submissions that do not conform to the page limits described above will be 

returned, and teams will only be allowed to resubmit if the revised entry is submitted prior 

to the deadline. Written submissions that both do not conform to the page limits 

described above and are submitted on the deadline date will not be considered for the 

competition.

• FDIC will provide teams with a public dataset to assist in addressing the competition 

question. Teamsmay supplement this dataset with additional data available to the 

general public. FDIC economists will assist students in finding resources and address 

competition questions via email and public help sessions.

• The competition consists of two rounds. In the first round, teams submit a written 

response to a question on the banking industry. In the second round, 5 finalist teams will 

be invited to Washington D.C. to give a presentation of their findings and answer questions 

from a panel of judges who work in the areas of banking and bank supervision.
• To ensure that university affiliations remain anonymous to the judges, finalist teams and 

their institutions should not publicize their selection until after the conclusion of the final 

round of the competition.

• FDIC will sponsor all travel related expenses for the 5 finalist teams that are invited to 

Washington D.C. for the second round presentations.

• All judge determinations are final and the winning team will be notified at the conclusion 

of the competition.

Permissions

All competition participants must agree to the following permissions:

• I give permission to post the recording of my presentation and photos taken during my 

presentation on FDIC.gov and FDIC social media outlets, which are accessible by the 

general public.

• I give permission to post my presentation on FDIC.gov and FDIC social media outlets,

which are accessible by the general public.

• I give permission to post my written submission on FDIC.gov and FDIC social media 

outlets, which are accessible by the general public.