Miss North Dakota, Cara Mund has won the Miss America 2018 crown. There was not a dry eye in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Sunday, 10 September, when event host Chris Harrison and Sage Steele announced the winner of the highly anticipated beauty pageant.

The 23-year-old Brown University graduate managed to emerge victorious in five categories including lifestyle and fitness, evening wear, talent, interview and onstage questions. She beat 50 contestants to win the crown.

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Mund, who has been accepted to law school at the University of Notre Dame, defeated runner-up Jennifer Davis (Miss Missouri), 2nd runner-up Kaitlyn Schoeffel (Miss New Jersey), 3rd runner-up Briana Kinsey (Miss District Of Columbia) and 4th runner-up Margana Wood (Miss Texas).

Along with the crown, the new Miss America won a $50,000(£37000) scholarship, a six-figure salary for the next one year and a contract with Dick Clark Productions.

During the competition, she revealed her mother as her greatest role model. "She's been diagnosed with cancer three times. Despite the circumstances, she's always told me, you can't control the cards you're dealt, but you can control the hand," Mund said during the event.

Miss America 2017
Miss North Dakota Cara Mund won the crown of Miss America 2018 Reuters

The multi-talented beauty queen has previously won pageants like Outstanding Teen, Little Miss, Miss Pre-Teen and Miss Junior Teen. Apart from winning beauty contests, Cara is a national dance champion. She won over the audience and the judges during the Miss America event by her self-choreographed jazz dance moves on Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel.

During the competition, Cara was asked a tricky question about US president Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate deal. "I do believe it's a bad decision. Once we reject that, we take ourselves out of the negotiation table and that's something that we really need to keep in mind. There is evidence that climate change is existing. So whether you believe it or not, we need to be at that table, and I just think it's a bad decision on behalf of the United States," she answered.