DECA is centered around 2 types of events: Role plays, and written events. Role plays are face paced: you get a scenario at the competition, and you have 10 to 30 minutes to read through and prepare a presentation with a judge. These can be on anything, from managing a hotel to dealing with inter-office relationships. Written events are prepared before competition, and is usually given to the judge beforehand. During the actual competition, you present to a judge about what you have prepared.

Certain DECA events, most notably the role plays and professional selling events, also require testing. These are 100 question quizzes that test basic knowledge in one of the clusters, and is taken at the high school weeks before states. It might sound scary, but there are a ton of different ways to prep for the test.