A student team from the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta, won 2nd place in Islamic Economics Olympiad, hosted by Universitas Darussalam Gontor (UNIDA Gontor), 10-24 January 2023.

A brilliant teamwork from three FEB UNS students, Novita Anggun Pratiwi (Management Study Program), Muhammad Fatih Mafaiziddin (Management Study Program), and Fathir Fikro Al Ishlah (Development Economy Study Program) brought them to the final stage in a virtual competition against 25 teams from all across Indonesia.

In the final stage, the are 6 (six) teams, the UNS team, Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Airlangga, Universitas Brawijaya (2 teams), and Universitas Mataram, must compete and showcase their ingenuity and agility during the final stages. In each stage, participants must engage in English.

During these stages, the teams must compete in four rounds, the first is a mandatory quiz, the second is an exchange-questions round, the third is a battle round, and the fourth is the economist figure round. The challenge uses a minus-point assessment method for each wrong answer.

The questions prepared by the judges are about the micro and macro sharia economy, financial institutions, fatwas and regulations, capital market, pre-sharia economy development, global Islamic economist, and knowledge of Qur’an content regarding Muamalah.

In these last four final stages, FEB Team set a strategy to only answer questions when they are confident with the answer and avoid negative points, which then brought them to be the 2nd winner.

The team leader, Novita Anggun, who was familiar with the championship and students’ olympiad come up with this strategy for the team to win the Islamic Economics Olympiad. She was in charge of the overall championship framework starting from registration, material dissemination, group study system, teamwork mechanism, presentation material, answer composition to be delivered to the judges, and many others.

“Before participating in this championship, I tried to instill a specific value in my team with an objective to let them know and understand that it does not matter what problems arise in the future, since we cannot predict each of probable problems, we must go on and participate to the final stage. Never be afraid to try, we will never know the extent of our competency and capacity if we never try,” she reveals.

She also mentioned that a race toward virtue is recommended to human beings. Race toward virtue will bring a better output because the standard for winning the race will keep improving, thus, encouraging us to enhance our morale.

In every championship we get new experiences, opportunities to learn time management, and how to establish priorities to accelerate our competency during the competition.

“We learn the wisdom to trust all Allah plans, to believe, to be sincere, and grateful for each and every opportunity given,” she concluded.