Testing her luck

Junior Sarah Bauer said she believes she won a spot on the long-standing game show “Jeopardy!” through luck.

“Last March, I took the college online test. It’s a 50 question test. The whole test only takes about 10 minutes, and they give you seven seconds to answer each question,” Bauer said. “By May, I had gotten an email saying that they were giving me an audition, which was super exciting because I didn’t think I would get an audition because the online test was super hard.”

The following June was when the audition was supposed to take place. Around the time of her audition, she was set to take flight to Paris where she would be interning with the state department.

Bauer attempted emailing the producers in hopes of being able to schedule a different audition day, but the earliest she was able to schedule an audition for was the exact day in which she was supposed to check in at the embassy in Paris.

Through cooperation with Bauer’s internship coordinator, she was able to push her arrival date to Paris one week later so she was able to audition for the show.

The next thing Bauer said she knew, she was packing her bags and heading to Washington D.C. for her second and final audition.

“I didn’t look back, I guess,” Bauer said. “So that was pretty great, even the government sees the importance of “Jeopardy!.”

12,000 college students took the online test, and from that number, only 300 individuals were called back to actually audition to be on the show.

From the 300 prospective contestants, 15 were selected to participate on the show and called back for filming.

“They put us up in a hotel by Universal Studios, so there were things to do, and you get two free days before the show starts,” Bauer said. “We flew out there, just got some time to run around in California, and then Thursday morning, bright and early, they shuttled all of us to Sony Studios. The families also got to sit in the audience.”

After a number of rehearsals and practice-type rounds, it was time for the show to begin. As the rounds before Bauer’s took place, there she sat — locked away in a secluded, claustrophobia-inducing room with a movie playing in the background so that she wasn’t able to hear what was happening on the set.

“It’s a pretty small studio. It’s not as big as I would have thought,” Bauer said.
Bauer has been a fan of the game show for as long as she can remember and recounts competing with her family members.

“I’m totally an avid watcher. I remember first coming home from school and watching “Jeopardy!” when I was in like second grade,” Bauer said. “That’s when I would watch with my family, and it can be competitive. I wanted to be good at it so that I could beat my brothers and sisters and stuff. We don’t really keep score, but we know who wins,” Bauer said with a confident smile.

Back at the studio where the game show was being filmed, executives would constantly, but always nicely, remind the contestants that everything they were participating in would have to be kept essentially a secret up until the actual episode airs in February.

“We know we can trust you,” they would say. “We’re just not allowed to.”

Being on the show was the ultimate experience for Bauer, one she said that she lucked out on in the sense that she has heard of older prospective contestants who had spent many years trying to get onto the show, but to no avail.

“It’s hard to talk about my performance without giving too much away, but I’m pretty satisfied with how things went.”

Bauer still swears by the luck that she said she believes landed her a spot performing as a contestant on the game show that she grew up with.

“I guess part of it is luck, and part of it is being culturally literate,” Bauer said.