South Brunswick Student Finishes in Top 10 of State Geography Bee

Year after year, South Brunswick students have left their mark on one of the most difficult competitions for children nationwide.

The annual National Geographic Geography Bee once again had a significant South Brunswick flavor, as Brunswick Acres Elementary school fifth-grader Girish Sankrithi became one of the top 10 finalists in the competition.

To advance to the National GeoBee is no easy feat in and of itself. Students in grades 4-8 first must compete at the school level against their classmates, answering questions like, "Which of the following cities has the least average annual rainfall? Sydney, Belize City or Kabul?"

Then the local champions take a standardized test to qualify for the state competition, with only the top 100 scores accepted.

In the state competition, participants are divided into five random groups with one practice round and eight regular rounds of questions. The top 10 students then advance to the final round. 

Girish won at the school level before he was selected for the New Jersey level Competition. At the State Competition held on April 5 at Rowan University, Girish tied for sixth place overall. This was the second consecutive year for Girish in the New Jersey State Competition, as he was also one of the 100 kids selected for the competition in 2012, when he was the only fourth grader to make it.

Last year, Siddharth Kurella, an eighth-grader at Crossroads North Middle School in Monmouth Junction, won the state National Geographic Bee  and went on to the National Competition in Washington D.C. 

Congratulations to the other two township students to make the state competition as well, Varun Rajesh, a sixth-grader at Crossroads South Middle School, and Zarir B. Hamza, a seventh-grader at the Noor-Ul-Iman School.