For most first year students at Dartmouth, the fabled college acceptance letter is the best thing the mail man has ever delivered. But 18-year-old Jordan Kovnot '04 said his Jeopardy! acceptance letter was "possibly more exciting."
"They accept far less people than Dartmouth," he explained.
Kovnot missed out on four days of freshman orientation to fly out to Seattle for the Jeopardy! College Tournament, held at the University of Washington.
The experience -- which he said was "a real thrill" -- not only made Kovnot one of 15 students to appear in the annual College Tournament, it also made him one of the special freshmen that the Office of First Year Students always talks about in letters mailed to incoming students and their families.
Kovnot is not your average Jeopardy! viewer -- for him, the trivia game show is an actual hobby and not just a game show viewing experience.
"If it was on, I made a point of watching," he said, explaining that when he is at home, he yells out questions in response to host Alex Trebec's "answers." He said his favorite categories are the "quirky" ones like "Before and After" that require a little more thought than straight memorization questions.
So, when there was an announcement after one episode of the show that there were tryouts to be on the program in Philadelphia, Kovnot decided to go for what had always been a fantasy for him.
"When you watch, you play along," he said. "You wonder how you'd do in that situation."
He said the audition process was not very hard, but he acknowledged that the vast percentage of people who tried out did not make it onto the show.
There were about 80 people at the first weeding round of the auditions in Philadelphia. Everyone answered 50 questions in about 10 minutes. The responses were collected and 15 minutes later, 14 names were read off. Kovnot's name was in this group.
In the second round, there were mock buzzers and the possible contestants played a mock round of Jeopardy!. Kovnot said this round was not really to see what contestants knew, but how well they worked within the scope of the game.
He said when the day ended, he didn't feel like he had shined above the other candidates, and was surprised to receive a letter about a month later saying that Jeopardy! was flying him to Seattle to appear in the tournament.
"I was really off the wall," he said.
After going on his Outing Club trip in section A and moving into the College, Kovnot left Hanover and jetted to the West Coast for the filming.
The other students in the tournament were from a wide variety of schools -- from Harvard University to Rice University to the University of Delaware. Kovnot was the only Dartmouth student.
He said he cannot reveal how he actually did in the tournament because of contract agreements -- he could lose any money that he won -- but he said it was "just surreal." The show will not air until Nov. 9.
"You watch it on TV for so many years and then get thrown into it," he said.
Not only did Kovnot have to learn the intricacies of the buzzers -- you must wait until Alex Trebek has fully completed the reading of the questions -- but he had to remain composed.
"My stomach was churning," he said, remembering that the actual length of the game is only about 13 minutes of actual playing -- the rest of the program is advertisements.
He said his least favorite part of the game was the part when the audience gets to learn about the contestants -- who are all wearing their college sweatshirts for the tournament.
"I don't even remember what I said," he said. "It was a blur."
Kovnot said that he has always liked to play trivia games -- like Trivial Pursuit, but that he never sat around memorizing facts from atlases or other fact books, until he learned that he had been accepted as a contestant on Jeopardy!.
On the day when he heard, he bought fact books and the newest version of Trivial Pursuit and his friends drilled him on the questions.
He said since the top prize was $50,000, all of the review was definitely worth the effort.
"I had a goal, which was a lot of money," he said succinctly.
