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It’s not every Sunday that a group of middle schoolers happily piles into a car for a 90-minute trek, but for eleven of our 6th and 7th graders, February 22nd was different. They were headed to Gindi Maimonides Academy for the Regional National Science Bee, and the energy was high from the start.
The drive itself was part of the adventure. The carpool erupted when they spotted a "vintage" Jollibee sign—faded, cool, and total "food goals." While they didn't stop to eat, they had to snag a photo of the iconic Filipino fast-food spot as they passed by before getting down to business.

The Art of the Buzz

Once the students were split into their grade-level rooms, the real "game" began. It wasn't like a normal test; it was a high-speed mental sprint.

The students didn't have old-school plastic buzzers. Instead, they used their phones or laptop spacebars to ring in. The moderator would read a question, and the race was on. The trick? The questions were designed to be "pyramidal." The first sentence was incredibly difficult and rewarded the most points, while the second and third sentences gave hints that made the answer more obvious.

"One of the questions was about Einstein," the students remembered. “The first few clues were tough, but the last hint was E=mc2 and that gave it away!”

You had to be bold. If you buzzed in early and got it right, you banked the points and got closer to the "finish line"—the first person to reach five points won the round and got to take a break while the others scrambled to catch up. In the preliminary rounds, a wrong guess didn't hurt you, but in the finals, the stakes got higher: if you were the third person to guess and got it wrong, you actually lost a point.
 

Inside the “Buzz”

The questions covered "all the sciences"—from Paleontology to Physics. Olivia Ogom even credited her success in anatomy to a very relatable source: “I got one of the answers because my mom keeps reminding me not to eat junk food because it will clog my arteries,” she laughed. “And the answer was arteries!”

Other questions were like puzzles. One started with the roar of a Majungasaurus and ended with a hint about where lemurs live. The answer? Madagascar.

As the preliminary rounds wrapped up, the competition reached a fever pitch. In the 7th-grade room, the pressure was so high that students were frantically writing down questions just to figure out what subjects hadn't been asked yet.

Our students didn't just compete; they excelled. Autumn Bradford, Saanvi Mehta, and Olivia Ogom all fought their way into the finals. Olivia narrowly missed a podium spot in a photo-finish: “Technically if there was a 4th place medal, I would have gotten it,” she noted, “but the other kid answered just a bit faster than I did!”
 

Next Stop: Florida!

Because they reached the finals, Autumn, Saanvi, and Olivia have officially qualified for Nationals in Florida! The road ahead is going to be even tougher, and the team is already back in "study mode." Between reading in-depth guides and Ms. Miller’s classroom lessons on physics and wavelengths, the girls feel ready for the challenge.

As Saanvi put it, “It was fun, but I feel like we need to study more now... Ms. Miller is making me learn things that will prepare me.”

Congratulations to all eleven participants for their hard work, and good luck to our National qualifiers as they head to the Sunshine State!