Registration for the 2025 ULI Hines Competition is open and will close on November 20, 2024

This year’s Competition will take place in Cleveland, Ohio!

Competition January 6- 20, 2025
Finalists Announced By February 20, 2025
Finalist Site Visit March 13, 2025
Finalist Presentations and Winner Selected April 3, 2025

Overview

The ULI Hines Student Competition—entering its 23rd year in 2025—offers graduate (or fourth year undergraduate) students the opportunity to form their own multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. Teams of five students pursuing degrees in at least two different disciplines have two weeks to devise a development program for a real, large-scale site in a North American city. Teams provide graphic boards and narratives of their proposals including designs and market-feasible financial data.

This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that anyone will apply the submitted schemes to the site. All participating finalist students typically attend the all-expenses-paid final presentation in the host city where the jury selects the winning project.

The competition is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges.

Longtime ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization, created the competition with a generous endowment after he received the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development in 2002.

Through 2024, at least 11,371 students on over 2,286 teams have participated in the competition since its first year in 2003, including 88 teams (440 students) who have made it to the finalist round. The winning team will receive $35,000 and all three of the finalist teams will receive $10,000. Another $10,000 will be allocated to honorable mention teams. More than 1,000 real estate and design professionals have served as advisers to these teams. In 2024, 59 teams submitted entries from 23 schools. In 2003, the competition’s first year, 49 teams submitted entries from 22 schools.

The competition is open to students around the world. Students in Europe may also wish to participate in the ULI Hines Student Competition – Europe and students in the Asia Pacific region may wish to participate in the ULI Hines Student Competition – Asia Pacific.

Join our LinkedIn Group                         Mentor a Team                         Serve on the Jury

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Competition Mission

The competition strives to encourage cooperation and teamwork – necessary talents in the planning, design, and development of great places – among future real estate professionals and the many allied professions.