Competing in DECA is quite challenging. If you're new, it can be hard to fully get a grasp on what DECA is, what they will test you on, how to prepare for roleplays and the list really goes on. Here are some resources that hopefully will help you with your DECA journey!

Choosing a Category

To start off your DECA competition journey you will need to choose your category or event. This is what you'll be competing in for the whole year so choose wisely! DECA provides a variety of competitive events to suit your strengths and interests, check it their competitive events list in the link below. There are two formats of competitive events; roleplayes (case studies) or written up reports. Roleplays are typically the most common, here is a rough overview of the main competitive event types in roleplay case studies:

Principles of Business Administration: Typically for first year individual members, here you will be tested and competing in core business topics of your choice.

Team Decision Making: Prefer working with another person? Then team decision making is for you! Team Decision Making is an event competed in with teams of two.

Individual Series: Individual events regarding specific core business topics and specific career areas

DECA also has prepared events where you create a presentation or written proposal beforehand and compete with that. 

When choosing a category, one of the first things you should look at is the DECA career cluster chart. 

Ultimately this chart covers all the core business topics and career fields and what competitive categories DECA provides under them. Look through this chart, find what you're interested and then you can start!

So what exactly do I need to compete?

There are several ways to compete in DECA, written exams and presentational skills or roleplays. Roleplays tend to be the most popular due to it's ability to really strengthen professional communication skills but presentational events are also quite important. 

The Exam

Either way, both events require you to take a test. Test usually go by career cluster which means whatever your event is specific to (i.e. marketing, entrepreneurship) you'll take a test for that. Often, different events will have the same exam (like principles of entrepreneurship and entreprenuership team decision making would both take the enrepreneurship exam). Below we attached several resources for studying these tests. 

The Roleplay

Roleplays are an in person test and usually account for 2/3 of your overall score. Usually, competitors are handed a case study at the beginning of their competing time and then is given prep time to prepare for this. The prep time is fully dependant on what type of competitive event you are competing in, individual events have ten minutes as they are indivual, while team decisions have 30 minutes. In the case study you are usually given the role you are playing at the top and so is your judge, usually these are business related positions such as business advisors, investors, or financial advisors. You then are suppose to play the part of your role and address the issue in the roleplay and provide a solution. Additional resources are below. 

Test Resources

AnswerWrite is a great resource to practice tests and it automatically grades them too! All you need is a paid DECA membership and use your ID and our password. Ask Mr. Andreola or the officers for the password if you don't have it on you. 

Additional Resources