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Northeastern student makes the college ‘Jeopardy!’ final

Senior Liz Feltner won her semifinal round, earning a spot in the finals on Feb. 22.

Liz Feltner ABC/Casey Durkin

February 19, 2022

Northeastern University student Liz Feltner qualified for the finals of the “Jeopardy! National College Championship.” Feltner won her semifinal round on-air Friday evening and received the second-highest score of all four semifinal rounds.

The Northeastern University senior studies political science and business, and is a longtime fan of the show.

“I used to watch it at home with my family every single night while we ate dinner,” she told Northeastern’s student newspaper, The Huntington News.

Going into the final Jeopardy question, Feltner was tied with Carnegie Mellon University student Kristin Donegan with a score of $11,000. Both contestants wagered all their points, and both got the question correct.

With both answering correctly, and receiving final scores of $22,000, the two students had to answer a rare tiebreaker question. Feltner buzzed in the quickest for the question “A 1920s trip to France inspired him to compose ‘An American in Paris,” answering correctly with “Who is Gershwin?”

At the end of all four semifinal rounds, Feltner received the second-highest score of all four winners, only being beaten by Jaskaran Singh from the University of Texas at Austin, who received a score of $24,400. The three highest-scoring semifinal winners moved onto the final round, meaning Feltner had made it.

Videos circulated on her Twitter page Friday night showing a classroom full of her fellow students cheering as they watched her win her semifinal round.

i like this one better and i have the luxury of choice SO #NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/3bBKk1D9nK
— Liz Feltner (@LizFeltner1) February 18, 2022

Feltner previously tried out to be a contestant on both “Jeopardy!” and “Jeopardy! National College Championship,” but this was the first time she made it past the initial online test.

“I love trivia, I’ve always been kind of a trivia hound,” she told The Huntington News.

Two other students with Massachusetts ties — Neha Seshadri from Harvard University and Joey Kornman from Brandeis University — also made it to the semifinal round but did not receive a high enough score to win their respective rounds.

Seshandri, whose round aired Thursday night, ended with a score of $999. Meanwhile, Kornman, who competed in the same episode as Feltner, earned a total score of $0 after waging all $9,200 of his points for the final Jeopardy! question.

Feltner’s final round will air Tuesday, Feb. 22.