D15 7th Grader Excels at State Geographic Bee

The following information comes from a Community Consolidated School District 15 press release. 

Shyam Sai, a seventh grader at Plum Grove Junior High, recently took 11th place in the 2014 Illinois National Geographic Bee, narrowly missing the competition’s finals. 

To qualify to participate in the competition, Shyam first beat out nine other competitors in the finals of Plum Grove’s geography bee. He then advanced to the state competition by scoring among the top 100 school geography bee winners on an extremely difficult written test.

At the state competition, which was held April 4 at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Shyam made it all the way to a tie-breaker round, where he missed making the finals by just one question.

Many of the participants in the Illinois National Geographic Bee are repeat winners and finalists. This, however, was Shyam’s first opportunity to participate in the incredibly tough competition, and his wonderful accomplishment is all the more impressive considering geography is not a course offered at Plum Grove. He succeeded due to his own studies and his Scholastic Bowl training.