Second-Year Optometry Student Goes All-In on Final Quiz Bowl Question and Comes Up Big

Although he didn’t prepare at all ahead of time, Melad Tannous ‘28OD, had an idea what the final question would be for the annual Quiz Bowl at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO) at Drexel University.

“I thought it would be something related to math because we didn’t have a lot of math questions in the earlier rounds,” said Tannous. “And, I’m pretty good at math.”

The question was:

Transpose this spectacle prescription:

OD: +5.00 + 2.00 x 180

OS: +3.50 + 1.50 x 135

The answer is:

OD +7.00 -2.00 x 90   

OS +5.00 -1.50 x 45

Tannous, who was the leader at the end of the three regular rounds of questions, went all in, betting all the points he had accumulated.

“It’s win or lose, take it or leave it,” he said.

And, he took it. Tannous finished first among the six contestants and will represent PCO at the 2027 EyeQ championship of the American Optometric Association (AOA) and the American Optometric Student Association (AOSA) at the group’s annual conference in Boston.

Dating back to 1991 on the national level, the Optometry Student Bowl — known as “The Bowl” — is a competitive game-show style tradition designed for students to let their hair down and have fun showing off their knowledge of optometry from questions crafted by judges who are faculty members. Winners from optometry schools across the country then compete at Optometry’s Meeting, the annual meeting of the AOA and AOSA.

The local competition, held April 16, 2026, on the Elkins Park campus of Drexel University, consisted of three rounds of 15 questions each. According to Savannah Lantz ‘28OD, PCO’s AOSA trustee for 2026 compiled the questions, the information for the questions was drawn from previous Quiz Bowl questions and suggestions from faculty that would test the participants’ knowledge of what they learned in their first two years of optometry school.

The other five PCO competitors in the local competition included Kara Bossi ‘28OD, Taylor Valente ‘28OD, Sachin Jeyaraj ‘28OD, Marshall Gonslaves, ‘29OD, PBHS ‘25, and Maria Jerez Morillo ‘29OD.

Judges for the event included Erin Sherman, OD ‘16, FAAO; Ashley Maglione, OD ‘15, Resident ‘16; Carlo Pelino, OD '94 Resident ‘95, FAAO; Steve Eiss, OD ‘95; and Melissa Richard, OD, MS ‘06.

“I thought they all were fairly well prepared,” said Maria Armandi, OD ‘92, Resident ‘93, assistant professor and coordinator of the Professional Practice Learning Center Support program at PCO/Drexel, who added there was an exciting buzz throughout the room from other optometry students. “I was impressed with the fact that there were two first-years who volunteered to participate even though a lot of this information they haven’t learned yet. But they did pretty well considering it was new information.”