FAQ

The Brain Bee is a competition that tests students' knowledge of neuroscience. The best young minds around the nation are presented with real brains, asked to diagnose neurological diseases, and are quizzed on how the brain relates to intelligence, memory, emotions, sensations, movement, stress, aging, and sleep. All of the questions are derived from the open source books downloadable through our How to Prepare page. 

Typically, there are local Brain Bee competitions representing each region or state. There are almost 150 local Brain Bees occurring in 30 countries around the world. Students register individually, not through their high schools, directly to their local competition. Neuroscientists will serve as judges for the event. An overview of the competition can be found under our page "The Event" in our Navigation panel. 

The Brain Bee is open to any student in grades 9 to 12, ages 13-19 at the time of the event. 

The first-place winner of our competition gets the opportunity to participate in a free summer research internship in select Neuroscience labs at the University of Utah. This is a great opportunity to get immersed early on into the world of neuroscience research, gain hands-on technical skills, and make life-long and useful networking contacts with members of the scientific community. 

The second, third, and fourth place gain the opportunity to "shadow a scientist," in which they will be able to shadow a graduate neuroscience student for half a day as they perform cutting-edge experimental techniques. This the winners will get the feel for a day in the life of a scientist. All winners also won a cash gift card! 

Participation itself provides high school students and their teachers with unique exposure to the world of neuroscience, STEM-related fields, academic research, and graduate studies, as throughout the day, they will be able to tour diverse labs and engage in talks with current graduate students. 

The International Brain Bee is an organization that was started by Dr. Norbert Myslinski in 1991 when he realized that there needed to be more interest in curing neurological diseases. This high school competition started with 12 local chapters. Now, there are over 150 local chapters in 30+ countries and each year, over 30,000 high school students compete. To learn more about the history of the Brain Bee, read all about it at the official International Brain Bee website! 

Check out our "How to Prepare" section to get a head start on studying! We will also follow up on registered students to ensure that they get the amount of tutoring that they need!

Finally, make sure to check our Twitter and Facebook pages as we will be constantly posting interesting videos and fun "quiz yourself" questions.