National Academic Competition
So, some kid won $30,000 in the National Spelling Bee. That’s great and everything, I guess, but in this time of No Child Left Behind, shouldn’t we be encouraging academic competition in other areas? Yes, yes, there’s the Battle of the Brains, It’s Academic, Mathletes and other forums. But they are all on the local level. And what do you win? A trophy, perhaps, or a few hundred dollar scholarship. Perhaps my fellow VTACO-ites can enlighten me. Is there a national middle school or high school level competition (team or individual) that awards prizes even approaching that of the Nation Spelling Bee? It certainly doesn’t get the level of coverage that the spelling bee gets if it does exist. Of course, maybe that's because the spelling bee is sponsered by newspapers.
posted by SpakKadi at 4:18 PM
4 Comments:
VTACO-ites? Wow, you're cool. :P
Shush, you. :P
Ah, such sophisticated debate here. ;)
The National Geography Bee gives out some pretty sweet prizes (scroll to the end)
I got some pretty nice prizes (books, games) at just the school level.
The Math Olympiad (through 6th grade) only gives you a freakin medal if you place first in the nation.
In Math at the highschool level, there's also the AHSME, AIME (as far as I got), USAMO progression which gets you... bupkus for a prize. (Regional and local competitions at least gave trophies...)
For science there's Science Bowl which gives some pretty crappy prizes (my school started participating after I graduated, but I doubt that we would've overcome the T.J. buzzsaw)
There's also the Lego championships, but Jason would be the one to ask about those details.
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