National Qualifying Exams (NQEs)

At the Varsity / Junior Varsity level, one of the ways to participate at the National Championships in the US History Bee, National Science Bee, National Political Science Bee, National Geography Bee and/or the US Geography Championships, is to take a National Qualifying Exam, or NQE.
NQEs are available to all students, but please note that Middle and Elementary School students that qualify on NQEs will qualify for Varsity/JV Nationals ONLY and not the Middle and Elementary School National Championships, as these tests were intended for high school students. To qualify for the Middle and Elementary School National Championships, students must still pass the Online Regional Qualifying Exams in their subjects (ORQE) and qualify at a Science/History/Geography Bee at a Regional competition as normal.

Overview

National Qualifying Exams will be administered either in person at Regional competitions or online. All four exams will be available at History Bee and Bowl events, while Science/History/Geography Bee regional events will only have the US History and Political Science events available. NQEs have 50 multiple choice questions, and students will have 20 minutes to complete them. Students receive 2 points for a correct answer, 0 points for an answer left blank, and -1 point for an incorrect response. Students cannot retake NQEs but can attempt to qualify on a different question set.

Students will be assigned to Varsity or JV divisions based on their grade, so 11th and 12th grade is Varsity, while 10th grade and lower is Junior Varsity. The exception to this rule is the Geography NQE, where divisions are based on birthdates, not grade level. For the upcoming Geography NQEs taken during the 2024-25 academic year, students born before July 1, 2009 are placed in the Varsity division, while anyone born on or after that date is considered Junior Varsity.

The opening and closing dates of the exams are the same as our Regional competitions, and after a given exam has been available for a time, all scores up to that point will be used to calculate a qualifying score, and anyone who scores at or above that number (the top half of scores for each exam) will qualify for Nationals. If that score is determined to be over 75, the qualifying score will be automatically set to 75. Students can still take NQEs after the qualifying score has been determined; to qualify, the student must instead meet or exceed the qualifying score to qualify for Nationals.

• 2024-25 C set exams are not currently available, but will be available by the end of September 2024, with qualifying scores being set on December 1.
• 2024-25 B set exams are not currently available but will be available by the end of November 2024, with qualifying scores being set on February 1.
• 2024-25 A set exams are not currently available, but should be available by the end of January 2025, with qualifying scores set being set on March 1. The C and B sets are generally the same difficulty, but the A set is modeled on the AP Human Geography Exam and is thus harder than the other two sets.
  All exam versions will be available online to students until mid-April 2025.

Details for qualifying through online exams for world championship level events (including the International History Olympiad, International Environmental Science Olympiad, and International Geography Championships) can be found here.