Glenwood student master of the map

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On April 5, Boardman Glenwood Middle School seventh-grader Pranav Padmanabhan participated in the Ohio Geographic Bee at Grandview Heights High School in Columbus.

After extensive preparation at home and school, he competed against the 99 top geography students in the state. This is the second consecutive year he finished in the top 10 in the state. He had also accomplished the feat last year as a sixth-grader.

The process began with students all over the state taking part in the preliminary round, which consists of 80 questions ranging from map locations to economic and physical geography. The 10 highest scorers in the school then take a 100-question test where the student with the highest score qualifies to take the state level exam, consisting of 70 multiple choice questions.

From that test, the top 100 scores in the state are invited to participate in the state bee in Mansfield.

As a seventh-grade student, Pranav was one of only two qualifiers in his preliminary group of 20 students to make it through all eight rounds without a single missed question. That score allowed him to advance to a tiebreaker round where he successfully completed another two rounds. That feat landed him in the final round of competition against nine other student qualifiers.

The winner of that final round would then be crowned ‘”state champion.” In the double-elimination final round of competition, Pranav completed another two rounds without missing a single question then successfully navigated through an additional seven rounds of competition before being eliminated. As a result, he finished the bee by correctly answering 18 questions that covered a variety of geographic topics.