High school project idea · Business & Entrepreneurship
Prepare for a real negotiation where both sides need to leave with something valuable.
Research interests, alternatives, boundaries, and tradeoffs before conducting a low-risk negotiation with an authentic counterpart.
Why this project matters
Research interests, alternatives, boundaries, and tradeoffs before conducting a low-risk negotiation with an authentic counterpart. This project feels different from a school assignment because the student serves a real partner, customer, vendor, club, or community organization, creates something visible, tests it honestly, responds to feedback, and explains the decisions behind the final result.
What you will create
Use these deliverables as milestones for Negotiate Your First Real Deal. Adapt the details to your interests, available time, and real-world opportunities.
Research positions versus interests, BATNA, fair concessions, ethical persuasion, relationship preservation, and written agreement terms. Document the needs, constraints, credible sources, and perspectives of a real partner, customer, vendor, club, or community organization.
Turn the evidence into a focused plan for the negotiation strategy file and outcome analysis, including success criteria, ethical boundaries, scope, and a realistic path to completion.
Create the first complete version of the negotiation strategy file and outcome analysis. Include a negotiation brief, issue map, opening proposal, concession plan, question bank, agreement draft, and post-negotiation analysis.
conduct a permission-safe real negotiation or structured role-play with an informed adult observer and record decisions and outcomes Record what happened, what failed, what users or reviewers said, and which changes you made.
Publish the final negotiation strategy file and outcome analysis with a portfolio-ready case study showing the challenge, evidence, process, revisions, results, limits, and next version.
Make the work stronger
For Negotiate Your First Real Deal, use these checkpoints to protect the quality of the work without turning the project into a performance for admissions.
Skills you can build
College application value
Can demonstrate initiative, curiosity, reflection, and growth through the student’s choices, response to setbacks, work with a real partner, customer, vendor, club, or community organization, and development of Negotiation, Active Listening, and Decision Making.
The goal of Negotiate Your First Real Deal is not to manufacture an impressive activity. Do real work, keep evidence of the process, and reflect honestly on what changed.
Negotiate Your First Real Deal is an original Compass educational starting point designed around real work, visible evidence, feedback, and reflection. It is not an admissions guarantee.