National Geography Bee

Option A: National Qualifying Exam

For the Varsity and Junior Varsity Divisions, most students compete in the Qualifying Stage through the National Qualifying Exam. The National Qualifying Exam is a 50 question multiple choice exam. All questions have 4 possible answer choices. The National Qualifying Exams are scored on the basis of 2 points for a correct answer, 0 for a question left unanswered, and -1 point for an incorrect answer. This scoring system rewards partial knowledge but not random lucky guesses. Students who have no clue about a particular question should thus leave it unanswered, but if they can narrow down the answer choices, they should likely then take their best guess even if they are not 100% sure.

Students may take the National Geography Bee National Qualifying Exam online, at all Varsity / JV National History Bee and Bowl in-person Regional Tournaments during the lunch break, or during the lunch break at select all-subject quiz bowl tournaments that are not run by International Academic Competitions. There are three versions of the National Qualifying Exam, which are known as Set A, Set B, and Set C. For National Qualifying Exams that are offered at Varsity/JV National History Bee and Bowl tournaments, the Exam Set corresponds to the question set that the tournament is using. The questions on the B and C Set versions of the National Qualifying Exams follow the National Qualifying Exam distribution for the National Geography Bee. The questions on the A Set version mirror the distribution found in the multiple choice section of the AP Human Geography Exam.

If taking the Exam online or at an in-person tournament, students typically have a 20 minute time limit. When taking the exam at an in-person tournament, students may also take the National Qualifying Exams for the National Political Science Bee, National Science Bee, and US History Bee. If a student takes just one exam, they have 20 minutes. If a student takes two exams, they have 40 minutes, but if they take three or four exams, they still only have 40 minutes (as time is typically limited during the lunch break of a tournament).

Students qualify for Nationals through the National Qualifying Exams in one of three ways.

Students need only to qualify on any one version of the National Qualifying Exam in any given academic year to be able to compete at the National Championships. If a student qualifies on one version of the Exam, and then takes a different version of the exam but does not qualify on that version, they remain qualified.

The cost is $20 per Exam Version per student. For all questions on the 2024-25 National Geography Bee NQE for Varsity/JV students, please email hs-info@iacompetitions.com.

Option B: National Geography Bee Regional Event

The second option for competing in the Qualifying Stage is to compete in a National Geography Bee at our National Science, History and Geography Bee regional events.
Between 80-100 of these are held each year both in-person around the USA and online. At our National Science/History/Geography Bee regional events, there is a Varsity division for 12th and 11th graders, and the JV Division is limited to students in 10th grade and 9th grade. Students in 8th grade and younger are invited to participate in our age-appropriate divisions of our SHG events. In these events, students compete in 3 preliminary rounds with 30 questions each. The top students advance to the final round, which will likewise have 30 questions, though these on average, will be somewhat more challenging.

All National Geography Bee questions are played with a buzzer system. Students are read paragraph-length questions out loud with the clues arranged in decreasing order of difficulty. Students buzz in when they believe they know the answer; if they are correct, they score the point for that question, otherwise they cannot ring in again. Please see the rules files posted here for further details on how the competition works.

Students qualify for the National Championships if their cumulative score is in the top 50% of their age division at the end of the three preliminary rounds. This is inclusive of ties for the last spot and odd numbers of students (just like on the National Qualifying Exams). The cost is $49 per student per competition.

For all questions on the 2024-25 National Geography Bee Varsity / Junior Varsity regional events, please email hs-info@iacompetitions.com.