Student Competes on "Millionaire"

Continuing the streak of students on reality television, David Elper ’15 was a contestant on Double Your Money Week of the long-running show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” that aired this past Tuesday, Nov. 27. Elber, who left the show with $1,000 in winnings, answered five questions correctly, skipped the sixth and got the seventh wrong.

“I had accumulated $12,600 until the seventh question, but if you get one question wrong in the first 10 questions then you drop down to $1,000” explained Elper.

It was seventh question that challenged Elper and the audience and led to his early loss. When asked about the “Toonoki Suit” in the popular Super Mario video game, Elper opted to use one of his “lifelines” and polled the audience. The audience narrowly provided the wrong answer and lead Elper to believe that the “Toonoki Suit” is made of fur from a flying fox.

“It’s a raccoon dog, apparently” laughed Elber. “I asked the audience, but they had no idea either.”

Despite the challenge at the end, Elber demonstrated remarkable knowledge during his time on the show, including the fact that the mythological figure Achilles’ death is thought by medical experts to have been caused by a punctured posterior tibial artery or that Vulcan was a hypothetical planet that 19th century scientists were convinced was real, until Einstein proved it didn’t exist.

The show, which was filmed back in September, goes through an elaborate screening process to choose potential contestants. Elper and other potential contestants have to go to a “Millionaire” testing center for a written exam. If the candidates pass the exam, they are immediately sent to do a subsequent interview and audition. If potential contestants pass all of these steps, they are put into a contestant pool and are then selected based off of their results from the exam, audition and interview.

“They record you answering questions as if you were on the show as a part of the audition process,” explained Elper, “and are ultimately looking for people who would come across well on television, as opposed to people who would get questions right.”

Elper received a postcard indicating that he had made it into the contestant pool and was informed some time after that he would be on the show. He then travelled to New York City in September for the filming of the show and was the youngest contestant on the show that evening.

Elper said being a contestant was a positive experience and so was talking to “Millionaire” host Meredith Viera about the College.

“She actually knew about Middlebury, so that was nice,” laughed Elper. “But, it all went by really fast and was all kind of surreal”