Quarry Lane School 6th Grader Rhea Mitr Wins 3rd Place in the 2014 National Geographic State Bee

The 2014 National Geographic State Bee was held April 4th at Fresno State University. 600,000 students from 13,000 California schools competed in a series of elimination rounds leading to the top-100 finalists who were invited to participate at the State competition.

Dublin resident and Quarry Lane School 6th grade Rhea Mitr won the 3rd place in competition (repeating her performance from last year’s competition), and also recently qualified in the National History Bee Regionals that was held at Pleasant Hill. Rhea was placed in the top-5 and has received an invite to participate in the Nationals held at Atlanta during June.

Rhea’s mother Mamatha Mitr: “The morning was bustling with students and their families from all over the state. The students went through several preliminary rounds. Only the top-10 were allowed to advance to the next level of the competition. However, there were 28 students who got the perfect score and Rhea was the only girl among them. They all faced off once again and through several tie-breaker rounds, the top-10 finalists were determined.

“The 10 finalists battled on the stage with several rounds on various aspects of geography, including current events. The competition then came down to the top-3. Between the three of them, the contest went on for a long while and finally, Rhea secured 3rd place!

“Although there were several participants from Southern California and other places, it was a clean sweep by Bay Area students!”

Rhea was awarded with a certificate of excellence, a compact atlas of the world, plus a check for $50.