On April 22-25, qualifying members of College Park’s DECA chapter will be attending DECA’s International Career Development Conference, also known as ICDC, in Orlando, Florida.

DECA’s ICDC is the highest level of competition DECA members can hope to attend each year. In order to qualify, students must get one of the highest scores in their category at the state level, also known as SCDC.

“At SCDC in Dallas, I competed against twelve students in the International Business Plan section and made top two while there,” chapter president Eman Fayyaz said. “Since it is my last year in DECA, I wanted to qualify for ICDC and win a chance to go to Orlando to represent CPDECA.”

Though ICDC is the toughest of the competitions in DECA, SCDC was also rigorous. Many students felt that the differences between scores weren’t significant, and believe that it was their hard work that ultimately pushed them forward.

“I think it was definitely the amount of work we put in,” Olivia Ye said. “My teammate Ada Wang really helped us branch out our campaign to include a lot of collaborations that helped our success in the long run. I have no clue what it was like in the judging room, but am sure it was a pretty close call. The other projects seemed good too!”

Of the 120 College Park students that went to SCDC in Dallas, Texas, 46 are eligible to move forward to ICDC. Many of the advancing members are seniors who will be graduating in May.

“This will be my third year [of DECA],” Sanuja Manage said. “I think knowing how the competition works and having previous years’ feedback in mind helped us compete.”

Aside from competing for ICDC, students going to Orlando will also have the opportunity to go to the Universal Studios theme park.

“I’m looking forward to meeting other DECA members from all around the world and having fun with my chapter at Universal Studios,” Eman said. “This is my second time going to ICDC and I’m looking forward to making it a great one.”