This past weekend, Brown Quizbowl placed second in the first undergraduate division at the National Academic Quiz Tournaments 2026 Intercollegiate Championship Tournament, which hosts both teams of undergraduates and teams that include graduate students as well. Brown tied with players from the University of Washington to place 15th overall.
Quiz bowl is an academic trivia game in which teams compete to be the first to answer questions correctly to win points for their team.
“There’s a thrill of answering a question,” said Rohan Kher ’28, who competed for Brown this weekend. Questions focus on academic subjects like history, science, literature, arts and geography. Often, each team member focuses on a specific area of interest.
Mason Yu ’27, for instance, mainly answers science-related questions at quiz bowl tournaments. “I don’t have to do any studying for (quiz bowl tournaments), since I focus on science,” he said. “I just have to pay attention in my classes and just pick up things from that,” he said.
At this weekend’s contest, Brown’s team was asked a question about famous chemist Carolyn Bertozzi, who spoke at Brown in 2023, Yu said. Having attended the lecture, Yu remembered Bertozzi mentioning something related to the question and was able to answer correctly to earn his team bonus points.
Brown Quizbowl President Megan Wang ’26 studies neuroscience at Brown, but she often answers questions related to music and art history for quiz bowl. Unlike Yu, she said, “Quizbowl allows me to really learn a bunch of academic subjects that I probably wouldn’t be able to if I just stuck to schoolwork.”
Quizbowl team members prepare for competitions in a number of ways, Wang added. Some people make flashcard decks with thousands of cards to memorize information, but Wang prefers to watch videos and listen to audio of previous tournaments.
“Getting a feel for what types of questions are being asked, how fast other teams are buzzing — I think that was a pretty good way to gauge what to expect.”
For Brown Quizbowl, the road to nationals started in February when they participated in sectional championships, Wang said. They competed against schools like Harvard and Columbia, ultimately placing third out of 15.
Brown’s team qualified for nationals because they were one of the 32 best teams in the country, Kher said.
“We were thrilled by it,” said Alexander Vertikov ’27, Brown Quizbowl secretary. “It’s a good opportunity to go exhibit our camaraderie, work together as a team and pursue something greater than ourselves.”
Since the tournament invited some of the best teams from different regions, each team was very strong and knowledgeable across a variety of subjects, Yu said. “It was a battle in every single round to get through,” he said.
Wang said that at the national tournament, Brown’s team went into overtime during one of the rounds, in which the moderator asked three extra questions. Vertikov led the team to victory by answering a question about one of Maine’s congressional district policies, Wang added.
“It’s impossible for one person to cover every single subject possible,” Yu said. “It’s good to rely on teammates to know things.”
“We were really focused on playing our game, and we weren’t too stressed about psyching ourselves out,” Kher said. “I think that mentality really helped us because we won a lot of games on the last question.”
Yu also credited the success of this weekend’s team to friendship between the four members. “I think we had a really good team chemistry since we were a team of four friends,” Yu said, adding that they ate meals and explored Chicago together.
“I would say team chemistry is what got us far,” he added.
