|
I'll Take Business Honors for $1,000
UT Student Scores Big on Jeopardy!
Having memorized the Trivial Pursuit© deck as a child, 1999 Business Honors Program graduate Corey Leahy soon alienated the rest of her game-playing family and friends. After all, it's no fun to play the game if you already know who's going to win. But her penchant for trivia finally paid off when she was selected to appear on Jeopardy! in July, winning more than $22,000 and a trip to Hawaii over the course of three days' competition.
Leahy says her experience in the Business Honors Program actually helped her performance on the game show. "We had to make presentations all the time and received feedback constantly, so I have become a very confident public speaker." She adds, "Also, I happened to have a suit to wear for the show."
Between her childhood fascination and her lucrative game show appearance, Leahy took up the subject of trivia as her senior thesis for Plan II. "I had noticed that trivia has changed over the years," she says. "All the questions seemed to be getting easier." Her thesis looks at the origins, forms, and popularity of trivia and why trivia is changing. In business fashion, she conducted statistical studies to determine whether trivia has been getting easier. These studies bore out her thesis. "One of my conclusions is that trivia is being marketed to a broad group of people, so it's got to be easier so that more people will play and more will buy the games," she says.
Leahy argues in her thesis that no piece of information can really be considered trivial, since having prior knowledge of a subject can prove useful in a variety of situations-from the life threatening to the mundane. "Also," she states, "trivia has a contrived worth…because Jeopardy! might award me $500 for knowing an obscure fact."
And what will she do with her earnings? Revealing her business acumen, Leahy says, "I'm going to put the money in an index fund for now." She is currently attending UT Law School and hopes to become a trial lawyer.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
