BURLINGTON, Vt. -
Some of Vermont's best and brightest high schoolers traded in their textbooks Thursday --for a shot at Game show success.
"It's really nerve-racking at first but after you get used to it you're pretty comfortable with it," said Erika Tallman, Green Mountain Technology and Career Center.
Six teams from across the state converged on Montpelier for this year's LifeSmarts Ultimate Consumer challenge.
The students were quizzed on topics ranging from personal finance and technology to consumer rights and responsibilities.
"It rides from simple questions to more advanced complex questions like the meaning of FDIC or something like that," said Jon Merchant, a 10th grader at Green Mountain technology and Career Center.
The team from the Green Mountain Career and Technical Center in Hyde Park's been participating in the Vermont JumpStart sponsored competition for the last three years.
"Well we're getting ready to graduate me as a junior and another couple of years I'll be out of my own so I really need to know what I'm going to be launched into," said Tallman.
Lisa Durocher is the team's coach, "This experience is very important because it really prepares them for competition and life as we know is very competitive," she said.
The long-time teacher says right now only a handful of Vermont's high schools require financial literacy as a graduation requirement.
She says competitions like the consumer challenge help boost skills students need to succeed, "These financial skills are key as we can see what happened with the economic downturn we really need to make sure that our students have that information that they are armed with it so they can make good financial decisions."
As the students plowed through a day of questions on credit cards, debt, and IRA's our own Dan Dowling got to try his hand at a new gig-trading in his weather wall for a shot as the show's host.
For these students this high stakes Q+A could have big rewards. The winning team will take its skills to the national championships in Philadelphia this spring.
"I think it's going to be crazy if we made it that would be awesome but I think definitely if you made it, it would be very nerve-racking," said Tallman
The team from Green Mountain Technology and Career Center made it to the finals but came in second to the team from Champlain Valley Union High School--That team will represent Vermont at the national tournament in Philadelphia this spring.
