4 members of the Business Club competed at the FBLA Bay Section Leadership Conference on Saturday, February 6, placing in a variety of categories and each earning a berth into the FBLA state-wide tournament.

“FBLA stands for Future Business Leaders of America, and it’s a national organization dedicated to helping students learn more about the business world, and hopefully explore careers,” said Business Club president Kelly Pien. “Some school chapters have a community service component to it, too.”

“At the competition, they offered a bunch of different objective tests; a lot of these were multiple choice tests. 100 questions, 60 minutes,” said Pien. “You choose one of 2 tests in one or 2 different subjects and you take a multiple choice test. Sometimes there’s speaking events too, like public speaking and job interview.”

According to junior Ray Altenberg, the tests are primarily composed of trivia. Unlike other competitive clubs such as Academic Decathalon or Mock Trial, FBLA test takers are not given content guides before the test.

“It’s kind of difficult to study for it,” said Altenberg. “You don’t have a guide, you just study the subject of the test and guess what’s on the test. We had to hold some study sessions.”

Pien placed 1st in business communications, Altenberg placed 3rd in computer problem solving and 8th in cybersecurity, and juniors David Yoo and Austen Li placed 5th in the entrepreneurship team test.

“Overall we did really well. All 4 of us made it to state,” he said. “We were the only team where everyone got an award,” said Altenberg.