The Oxford Strategy Challenge (TOSCA) is a team-based experiential learning programme with participants taking part in real strategy-focused client challenges over a week.
The Oxford Strategy Challenge is an opportunity for you to develop a broad range of transferable skills including teamwork, leadership, communication and business awareness. These along with the client relationship experience, will help you demonstrate your potential in applications, on your CV and in interviews.
You will be placed in a small team providing consultancy on a client project. The project you will take part in will be important to your client, an opportunity for hands-on client experience, and to make a real contribution to an organisation.
The Oxford Strategy Challenge is an intense challenge. Once you have received your client brief you and your team will need to complete the project in a short time period: you will have five days to tackle the challenge.
Applications for the Michaelmas term programme have now closed. Future dates will be listed here towards the end of term.
What will you get out of it?
The Oxford Strategy Challenge provides you with real-world client experience and development opportunities across eight key employment skills: team working, communication, initiative, creativity, planning, leadership, self-management and business awareness.
You also have the opportunity to develop skills in collaborating effectively as part of a remote team, managing a client relationship, collecting data under time pressure, reacting quickly to unexpected changes, and summarising and presenting your findings to a client.
Note that places are limited and applications close early if the programme is oversubscribed.
The schedule for each programme and application links can be found under 'Programme dates' below. Early applications are advised.
How does it work?
The Oxford Strategy Challenge is a team-based, experiential learning programme. Every aspect of the process will present a learning opportunity. This is a remote programme taking place online.
Assessment and Training
The programme begins with an assessment task and two 1-hour training sessions. The assessment task will require to you submit a short, written statement. On the Friday before the programme starts, you will be assigned to and introduced to your team (usually of four – six people), given the suggested timetable for your project, your client brief, and a short case study to complete as a team before the first training session. The online training sessions prepare you for the project. Topics include an introduction to consulting techniques, managing the client relationship, and reporting your recommendations.
The Project
The challenge starts with a briefing call with the client on a Thursday. Your team will collaborate over the weekend through to Wednesday when you will present your findings to your client. There will be the opportunity of an additional check-in call with your client on the Friday.
Graduation event
We will wrap up the Oxford Strategy Challenge with an online graduation event for you to network with others and share your experience and feedback.
Programme commitment
We recognise that participants on TOSCA have to fit this programme around their academic work, and that academic work takes priority. How much time you can spend will necessarily vary depending on your other commitments.
This is an intense programme. As an indication, previous participants have allocated around 2-4 hours per day for the five days of client research. However this is flexible and the time you decide to allocate to this programme will depend on the nature of the challenge and how you distribute tasks in your team. You should liaise with your colleagues so that each member’s peaks and troughs in availability can be covered. If you do have to drop your hours for a short period to address an academic work peak, then please be professional and let your team members know.
From participants...
I really enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I was able to incorporate skills I had acquired from other areas of my academic and extracurricular life into this new context. Read more about this participant's experiences.
The Oxford Strategy Challenge was a truly transformative journey that prepared us for the real world's challenges. Read more about this participant's experiences.
Thank you so much for providing this opportunity, it has been eye-opening in many respects and has given me confidence to apply my research skills in a non-academic context.
The programme was excellent. It gave us initiative, allowed us to think and manage for ourselves, and will be a really useful addition for my CV.
I found this a really helpful experience - I went in wanting to test myself and I feel that I did that 100% and was quite surprised by how much I managed to achieve in such a short time frame, from conceptualising the problem(s) to collecting significant amounts of data and synthesising all this for the final report and recommendations - it was incredibly valuable.
I loved my TOSCA experience. It taught me invaluable skills and gave me first-hand experience managing a client relationship. It gave me a really good understanding of the type of work I can expect from a consultancy.
TOSCA is probably one of the most valuable experiences I have conducted while studying at Oxford. I believe that I'll use the gained skills while applying for my dream job!
This has served as a springboard for my subsequent exploration. I am now aware of so many more opportunities... . It is also reassuring to confirm my time management skills and make myself aware I can explore multiple things while keeping up with school work.
[I] would recommend to anyone regardless of their career aspirations as the skills I gained from it were truly invaluable and could be applicable to any future career.
I gained significantly more experience in leadership and interpersonal relations than I expected.
