Rowan Kozminski will begin his senior year at Grand Rapids’ Catholic Central High School in the fall, but before that happens, he’s one of 20 high schoolers competing in the U.S. Department of Education’s Presidential 1776 Award civics competition.
“So, the first round of the Presidential 1776 competition, there’s a huge online multiple-choice test, so it was 3,000 questions, but you didn’t have to get through them all. I got through about 250 in each of the three sections, so I think I answered around 700 questions.”
Rowan ranked among the top four scorers in the state and advanced to the regional finals held at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in May, where he competed against 31 top scholars from across the Midwest.
“And we were asked all sorts of things on the Revolutionary Colonial period in the U.S. and there was a huge variety of questions. I thought the questions themselves were pretty interesting.”
Rowan will now compete against 19 other students for one of three scholarships in Washington, D.C.
“So, the top three people from the overall finals will advance to the championship round to determine who gets first, second and third, and all three of those top people will win prize money.”
After graduation, Rowan hopes to study math and economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
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