Post-World Championship update and what comes next

The time to start is as soon as you finish

Everest competed in the World Championships in May 2025 and I have been remiss about providing an update. There is a lot to share, and this post will only touch on the highlights:

1. Everest’s performance at the World Championship Olympiad

2. Everest’s recent media appearances

3. Preparation plan for History Bee Nationals 2026

4. What’s next for this newsletter

Performance at the World History Olympiad

At the US championships there are three history-events:

1. History Bee

2. American History Bee

3. History Bowl (team based)

(plus multiple-choice exams on different history topics like “women’s history” or “History of India”)

At the world world championships there are dozens of events. Everest competed in 14 buzzer-based competitions. Here is how she did:

1. History of Film: 1st

2. Spanish Language General History: 1st

3. History Bowl (team): 1st

4. Hextathalon (team): 1st

5. French History: 3rd (her “target event")

6. Recent History: 4th

7. Scramble (History of Fashion): 4th

8. Art History: 5th

9. General History Bee: 7th (just missed finals)

Other events she competed in where she did not make finals:

• Combined (History + Ping pong)

• Knockout

• French Military History

• Ancient History

• History of STEM

In total she “metaled” in five events, which I was told is the record number of metals ever earned by a girl at the world championship.

I will provide a more detailed play-by-play of both the world championships and the pre-and post-tours in a later post.

Media Appearances

While she did not win the world championship, being the top history-bee girl of all time has provided Everest with some media opportunities. Most notable was being a guest on the Jennifer Hudson Show:

She also appeared on Good Day LA (clip), and helped host Linda McMahon (Secretary of Education) when she visited Austin and the Alpha School (this got a lot of coverage, most not directly related to Everest, but she is there in the photos and many show her demonstration of the software to Ms McMahon).

She has a few more appearances lined up over the coming weeks I will share as they happen.

Preparation Plan for History Bee 2026

Everest is now focused on next year. She was heartbroken to miss finals by a single question in the general history bee at both the nationals and the worlds, and her goal this year is to at least make finals — to be in the “room where i happens”. Competition at the 5th grade is significantly stronger than 4th grade, and the overall level of competition at any given grade seems to be increasing significantly each year (a local Texas competitor a little older than Everest came in 4th in 2024, but did not make the semifinals in 2025), so she will need to work pretty hard this year to achieve her goal.

She is also planning on competing in four other events:

1. Geography Bee

2. Humanities Bee (Literature, Music, Fine Art, Dance, Architecture, Mythology, Religion, Social Science)

3. American Citizenship Bee (Government, politics, international relations, current events, economics, business, American society, US history, and US geography)

4. Quizbowl / Academic Bowl (team based covering everything)

The first three events all have significant overlap with the general history bee, but require additional deep dives to be competitive. We have not decided how much to focus studying on any given event (everything is a trade-off in time). At the very least she will be prepared for most “prelim-level” questions in the other bees - the question is how much further to go, and what she wants to sacrifice in the general history bee to be more competitive in the new bees.

So far this year she has focused on three things:

1. She has filled in her gaps on all the study guide topics IAC suggests for the first two sets of regionals (Sikh religion, Cuban Missile Crisis, Columbia, Delaware, Rolling Stones, Zaibatsu companies, Frederick Law Olmsted, etc.)

2. She is finishing a deep dive on all major world landmarks (Alhambra, CN Tower, Robbin Island, Burj Khalifa, Christ the Redeemer, Statue of Liberty, etc.)

3. Random topics as they come up in her life (Jennifer Hudson and American Idol, Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education role and wrestling, Chess, American Mythology, etc.)

She recently asked me if she could focus on more “real history”, so once we finish with a few more days on studying #1 and #2 topics, we are going to pivot to that. I think we are going to start with some wars that we can go deeper on (beginning with the American Revolution, the US Civil War and the World Wars). She knows all those topics now, but she only has a surface knowledge of people like Omar Bradley, Hermann Goring, or Nathaniel Greene; and no real awareness at all of people like Vidkun Quisling, William Joyce, Samuel Adams, or Baron von Steuben; or battles like Brandywine, Cowpens, Shiloh, or El Alamein, or even events like the NYC Draft Riots, or the invasion of Sicily. There is still lots of “real history” to learn.

The other strategy we are going to implement soon is “more memory palaces”.

Everest has a very deep knowledge of the American Presidents. At nationals when the moderator would say, “this president…” I was very confident she would get the point (I think she got every single one she was eligible for). A big reason was she has a very strong memory palace for the presidents (combined with multiple deep dives into each one). At the world championships in French History she had similar success with her memory palace for all the French presidents.

Presidents are the single most efficient thing you can study to do well at nationals. An American president was the answer to 6.9% of all the questions asked — 56/807 questions I recorded. That means that if you study all 45 presidents, on average, each person toy studied will come up 1.24 times — that is VERY efficient. All science questions combined only totaled 23 answers — and there are a lot more than 45 people and things to study to be ready for those 23 questions.

After looking at the data I think the next highest impact place to create a memory palace is “countries”. Depending on what you count as a country there are about 200 to know — so more than 4x the presidents. But a country was the the answer 75/807 questions at nationals — almost 10%. Every country she learns should come up ~0.4 times. Not as good as presidents, but better than any other big category like Battles/Wars. If she can learn all the history of all the countries in the world this year, the way she knew presidents last year, I think that will be fairly effective and a good use of her time.

She also enjoys reading, so I have been using AI to create shorter “kid friendly” versions of the important literature she should be aware of.

So that is the short term plan:

1. Deep dives every weekend on “real history”

2. Daily memory palace building to learn the history of all the countries in the world

3. Casual reading of the most important world literature in a kid-friendly way

What’s Next for This Newsletter

I have plans:

1. I will continue to provide updates on Everest’s path to Nationals v2

2. I will share more on our evolving study techniques — including how I am coaching her school’s Quizbowl team

3. I will share more on what I am learning about learning in general, and how we can all do it more efficiently

4. My first (and much larger) newsletter is Marketing BS. As I scale up #3, I think what I am writing here is of interest to a larger audience than just people competing in academic bees, so I am planning to do the work to merge the two newsletters somehow. TBD on how I do that, but it shouldn’t affect you in any way, other than potentially changing the name of the newsletter that lands in your inbox

More specifically I am planning to write the following posts in the near future:

1. An update on Everest’s school, the GT School, and how it plays into learning efficiently

2. Sharing specific memory palaces (the country one, but also other ones like the Periodic Table we created for the Quizbowl team members specializing in science)

3. A deeper review of both the world championship and the pre- and post-trips (I believe Everest and I were the only non-staff to go on both trips)

4. Specific Anki cards: I am considering writing posts on specific topics and sharing the Anki cards to go with it. So in theory all you need to do to learn a topic is to read my post and then download the anki cards into your deck, and start studying

If there is something else you would find valuable, please let me know in the comments.

In the meantime, Keep learning!

Edward (and Everest)