True; the skills are not very transferable, although I have to assume studying all those words helps on the verbal SAT eventually and might help you write better papers, too. But the kids who do well in bees would probably do well with those skills anyway. The general discipline required to do well is transferable, of course.

I won a bunch of reference books, including the full Encyclopedia Britannica. I wonder what they win nowadays?? Ipads, probably.