Stephen Sosnicki

Student competes on college edition of quiz show

Ask most college students what they want to be, and they'll dodge the question. Ask UA freshman Stephen Sosnicki what he wants to be, and he'll tell you.

He wants to be a millionaire.

In August, Sosnicki auditioned for the college edition of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," and this week, millions watched him play. Unfortunately for Stephen, he never even made it to the "hotseat."

An environmental sciences freshman who scored 1600 on his SATs, attends the University of Arizona on the selective Flinn Scholarship and aspires to be a rock star, Sosnicki is no Regis Philbin-loving television addict with a passion for Trivial Pursuit.

He's just a college student who saw a rare opportunity to win a million dollars and jumped on it.

Although he never sat in the hotseat - the chair across from host Philbin where one contestant can win $1 million - in the two shows that aired Monday and yesterday, he did participate in the "fastest-finger" round and said he enjoyed the overall experience the show afforded.

"I met Regis. He's got that super-smooth-Las-Vegas-lounge-singer-thing-type going," Sosnicki said.

Competing in Tucson against hundreds of others in the program's nationwide search for college students, Sosnicki took three trivia tests and interviewed with the program's producers. Once chosen as a contestant, Sosnicki and a companion were flown to New York for the Nov. 14 taping and some sightseeing.

"I took my mom; I figured she's taken me on enough trips," Sosnicki said. After catching a Broadway show and a glimpse of Central Park and Times Square, Sosnicki and his mother, Sandra, were on their way to the studio.

On the set, Sosnicki and 13 contestants from other schools tested their intellectual boundaries in an all-day taping of two episodes.

Referred to in the studio as "significant others," those who accompanied the competitors looked on as students campaigned for reign of the hotseat.

Sandra Sosnicki nervously watched her son during the taping.

"I had both fingers crossed," she said.

Stephen Sosnicki also found the experience "nerve-wracking," explaining that the jolting special effects seen on television are just as intense on the set.

Although the lighting and music were as wild as he expected, Sosnicki said he was surprised at the amount of time the program took to tape. The hourlong game show actually takes about three hours to film because unnecessary scenes - such as unanswered phone calls to "lifelines" - are edited out in the final product, he said.

To serve as his phone-call lifeline, Sosnicki arranged for about 20 other Flinn Scholars to assemble in one room, coming and going based on their class schedules.

Paul Rhatigan, a UA electrical engineering sophomore and member of Sosnicki's lifeline team, said that if Stephen called him, he "planned on looking things up on the Internet." With other scholars preferring to use only their minds as a resource, Rhatigan said, "between all of us, we probably could have gotten it."

"Millionaire's" Publicist Trisha Miller pointed to the relaxed energy college students tend to have and the laughs they share with Philbin as motivations behind creating the show's college edition.

She describes the version, done for the first time last year, as a chance "to see 14 college students and give them an opportunity to win a million dollars," adding that they can put the money toward their education.

Effective in coming months, "Millionaire" will air in two different formats: syndicated and new, network episodes. Also, students, like Sosnicki, who appeared on the show but never sat in the hotseat, are eligible to audition for future episodes.