The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that more than 60,000 of its readers took a personal finance quiz drawn from the National Personal Finance Challenge’s final round. The multiple-choice questions covered topics including stock prices, car insurance, and debt management, and the Journal invited readers to match their knowledge against that of high school competitors who made it to the finals.
The Mt. Hebron High School team from Ellicott City, Maryland, won the national championship this year after losing by a single point in 2025, according to Vann Walker Prime, the team’s teacher and coach. The four team members — Vishva Rao, Daksh Mathapati, Pranav Boreddy and Jiwoo Jeong — wrote the explanations for each question in the quiz, which the Journal published June 5.
The quiz is part two of a series. The Journal previously reported that while most readers correctly identified Treasury inflation-protected securities in the first quiz, fewer knew about the debt-avalanche method for paying down loans.
The National Personal Finance Challenge is an annual competition that tests high school students on personal finance concepts. The Mt. Hebron team’s comeback victory comes as financial literacy among young Americans has drawn increased attention amid persistent economic uncertainty and rising consumer debt.