Sussex students back on screen in ‘University Challenge’
Four students from the University of Sussex will be back on screen on Monday (3 November), an in attempt to make it through to the second round of BBC Two’s ‘University Challenge’ TV show.
The Sussex quartet have a second chance to reach the second round, as one of the four highest-scoring losers in the opening round of the famous quiz, which challenges students from UK universities to answer questions about all manner of academic subjects.
Although they had raced to an early 50-point lead in the first round against St Peter’s College, Oxford, their opponents won the tie with 205 points - thanks largely to the individual performance of their captain.
But the Sussex team scored a creditable 150 points and presenter Jeremy Paxman said at the end of the programme: “150 may well, Sussex, be a high enough score to come back as one of the highest-scoring losers – who knows? We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the rest of the contest.”
The team had already done well to get even that far: out of the 140 or so universities that applied for the 2014-15 series, only 28 – including Sussex – made it through the regional qualifying heats to the televised rounds.
You will have to wait until the programme is broadcast at 8pm on 3 November to find out whether the Sussex hopefuls make it to the second round.
Appearing alongside team captain Joss MacDonald (a BA History and Politics undergraduate) will be David Spence (a postgraduate on the MSc in Scientific Computation), Matthew Dean (studying Philosophy) and Thomas Whitehurst (whose MSc is in Cognitive Neuroscience).
Sussex has a glorious history on the long-running ‘University Challenge’ quiz and is currently ranked equal third in the table of winners, having been champions twice (admittedly quite a while ago, in 1967 and 1969). Be warned, though: Sussex also gained a certain notoriety one year by scoring the lowest score ever – just 10!