Where in the world are the Geography Bee state champions? During the spring of 1999, I attempted to contact each of the 316 college-aged students who had won a state geography bee. As promised, here are the results of the study. Included are both an article appearing in Bee Line, the newsletter of the National Geography Bee, as well a copy of the more comprehensive research results which I delivered to Bee Director Mary Lee Elden in August 1999.

This information included is essentially a compilation of the responses which I received. I have not included e-mail addresses or names of survey respondents, although Appendix 10 does contain a list of college-aged contestants with corresponding major and college as known. If a name is missing from the list, the student is either still in high school or out of college and therefore was not included in the study. You are welcome to use the material found here in other projects, but I would appreciate it if you would contact me at brill@virginia.edu before doing so.

Finally, thank you again for your help in answering these questions. I appreciated every one of them, since without your responses, the study could not have happened. I began this project because I wondered what had happened to the other contestants I remembered, and I ended by discovering that each had a unique story which can only be hinted at here. I really enjoyed reading each story, and I hope you do as well. Please e-mail me with any questions or comments, or sign or view the guestbook. Enjoy!

• Bee Line article

• Research Summary