The New Jersey High School Consumer Bowl is an educational competition for high school students across New Jersey. The competition was first introduced by the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs in 1997, with the purpose of educating young adults on a variety of consumer topics dealing with credit, purchase of cars and furniture, health clubs, and other general consumer topics with the aim of providing these students with the power to spot scams and to protect themselves from fraud and dishonest business practices. Each school can enter a team of 4 individuals, with one person as the alternate.
The NJ Consumer Bowl has 3 levels to the competition: county, regional, state. The county competition is located in a location within the county. The winner of the county competition will move onto the regional competition, where they will compete with the winners of other counties in their part of New Jersey: northern, southern, or central. The winners of each regional competition will then compete in the state final.
Each competition is broken down into 3 rounds: individual, team, and lightning. In the first round, each team member is asked an individual question and has 10 seconds to correctly answer that question. Each correct answer will give the team 5 points. In the second round, each team will be given a team question to answer, however, only the team captain can answer for the team. Like the first round, there is a 10 second limit and each correct answer will give 5 points. During the second round, there will also be 3 bonus questions that will be asked after each set of team questions. All team members in the competition will be able to buzz in and answer the question, there is a time limit of 5 seconds and each correct answer will give 10 points. In the final round, aka the Lightning Round, 20 questions will be asked and the first student from any team to buzz in will be given a chance to answer the question, there is also a 5 second time limit and each correct answer will also give 10 points.
The Ocean County Competition was held here, at Central on Monday, January 29, 2024. The teams competing were Central Regional High School, Donovan Catholic High School, and Barnegat High School. From Central, we have Serena Calhoun as our Captain, Aaron Dong, Edison Dong, Matthew Tsucalas, and Shane Sterling. At the end of the first round, Donovan had 20 points, Barnegat had 10, and Central also had 10. At the end of the team round, Central surged ahead with 40 points, while Donovan stayed at 20 points, and Barnegat advanced to 25 points. At the end of the lightning round, after 3 intense rounds of competition, Central and Donovan were tied at 100 points each, while Barnegat ended with 65 points. Central and Donovan entered the tiebreaker round, where 5 questions were asked, 10 points each. After taking the first 3 questions, Serena Calhoun secured the win for Central, making it our fourth year in a row.
