My name is Khushi Patel. I am a senior with a double major in Accounting and Business Administration (Finance Emphasis) graduating in December 2022. Additionally, I was the former President of the Accounting Society, treasurer of the South Asian Student Association, Chapman Ambassador, and Executive Finance Assistant for the Student Government Association. I have been working as a research assistant for several years and this year I started my own research project as part of my BUS 491 course with Professor Cristina Nistor as my advisor. My project combined my interest in marketing, accounting, and data analytics.

I wanted to analyze an interesting industry and use data analysis methods to study it. I started by creating a large dataset for all 8 major auctions in the Thoroughbred Horse Industry in the United States between 2016-2022. Then I analyzed auction prices and results in the state of Texas while modeling the impact of COVID-19 for the industry. We found that average prices increased after the pandemic and more horses were auctioned in the Texas market. While working on this project, I gained valuable knowledge about compiling data, cleaning datasets to make them usable for research insights, on developing research hypotheses, and on creating a research poster to share the findings.

I had the opportunity to present my research project at the poster session for Chapman University along with many other students who worked on their own undergraduate research ideas. At the Student Scholar Symposium, I was the only student doing research in business, so I was excited to share what we found in our research project. Working on various research projects throughout my undergraduate years has been very beneficial and I look forward to the next chapter in my professional journey.