ULI Hines Student Competition
The 2024 schedule will be released Summer 2023.
2023 Competition
Competition Jan. 9 – 23, 2023
Finalists Announced By February 23, 2023
Finalist Site Visit March 10, 2023
Virtual Finalist Rehearsals March 24, 2023
Finalist Presentations and Winner Announced Thursday, April 6, 2023
Overview
The ULI Hines Student Competition—entering its 21st year in 2023—offers graduate 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 three 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. The winning team receives $50,000 ($5,000 of it goes to their university) and the finalist teams each receive $10,000. 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 2023, at least 11,135 students on over 2,227 teams have participated in the competition since its first year in 2003, including 84 teams (420 students) who have made it to the finalist round. More than 1,000 real estate and design professionals have served as advisers to these teams. In 2023, 84 teams submitted entries from 39 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.
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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.