Arthur School alumnus Modlin appears on “Jeopardy!”

And the answer is: “This East Carolina University Arthur Graduate School of Business alumnus competed on ‘Jeopardy!’”

Who is Rhyne Modlin?

Modlin, who earned his Master of Business Administration in 2023, competed in the iconic game show on May 5. 

After his appearance, Modlin shared the process for getting on the show, what hopeful “Jeopardy!” contestants need to know, what his experience as an ECU graduate student was like and how the Arthur MBA program helped him run his business, Advanced Hydrogen Technologies Corporation. 

Responses are in Modlin’s own words with minor edits for length and clarity. 

Why did you try out for “Jeopardy!”?

Believe it or not, I actually don’t watch “Jeopardy!” The only episode that I’ve seen in the last 15 years or so was my episode. However, I am a trivia fan and I like to challenge myself. I’ve battled the long-term and often debilitating effects of a childhood infection for the majority of my life. As a result, I’m determined to push myself to accomplish as much as I can regardless of my illness. Because it is nearly impossible to get on “Jeopardy!,” I knew that I would probably try it at some point.

Describe the process to get on “Jeopardy!” and what are some details viewers would be surprised to know?

After I finished my MBA at ECU, I started a Ph.D. at UNC Greensboro. In late 2023, I decided to dive down the rabbit hole and try and get on the show. I was very fortunate to get through the selection process in just under two years. Most contestants have to try for much longer and repeatedly start the process over. There were two contestants in my green room group who had tried for 12 and 14 years to get there.

To advance to the show, you take a series of tests. If you score well enough on the first test, you advance to the next one, and so on. The final barrier is a gameplay audition where you play a mock game against other potential contestants. You aren’t given the results of the tests, and you must wait for up to one or two years at each stage to find out if you advance to the next test or audition. If you don’t hear back from “Jeopardy!” in the time frame following any stage, that means you have to start all over.

The number of potential contestants decreases dramatically at each successive stage. In Los Angeles, the producers told us that it is statistically 10 times harder to get on “Jeopardy!” than to be admitted to an Ivy League school like Harvard. Although we all wanted to win, merely getting on the show was a huge accomplishment for everyone there.

How did the reality of competing compare to your expectations?

I am haunted by my inability to get buzzed in first. The official game stats are (successfully buzzed in first per attempts): Ben – 73%, Ellen – 62%, Me – 38%. In other words, I was fractions of a second too slow on that day. I felt like I knew the board well, but I didn’t get to play as much as I needed to.

At the time of taping, I was too tired to process my frustration. My health had given up on me at that point. I flew out to Los Angeles several days before the show to try and adjust, but my body didn’t handle the flight well. My family went with me to manage as much of the logistics as possible so I could focus on optimizing my health. The last month or so of preparation was also painful. I worked on my reaction time under conditions of extra fatigue, and I’m used to accomplishing difficult tasks under sickness and duress, but I just wasn’t fast enough on tape day. Because I live with an atypical sleep cycle, I had also been awake for a very long time before taping. I was so tired by the end of the show that I didn’t even know what the “Final Jeopardy!” category was!

At the same time, I think it’s disrespectful to frame the outcome around just my condition. Ben and Ellen were both amazing players. Once you get to that level, all the competitors are very intelligent, knowledgeable and capable. Unfortunately, only one can win.

What advice do you have for future “Jeopardy!” contestants?

Without delving into metaphysics, ontology and epistemology (which you should probably learn about since anything and everything could appear as a “Jeopardy!” question), I advise anyone who wants to be on the show to learn about the world in an objective, reputable manner. While you can’t know everything, history is often written by the victors and post-structuralists might argue that there is no such thing as concrete reality, but do your best to get to the truth anyway.

If you want to learn a quote, for example, then get it from the actual source material. Many of the quotes in societal knowledge are stolen, incorrectly worded or misattributed. “Jeopardy!” is very particular and will penalize you for not noting the difference between the novels “Invisible Man” and “The Invisible Man.” I also like to cite these examples: the assembly line (Ransom Olds, not Henry Ford), the telephone (Elisha Gray, not Alexander Graham Bell), “The Mourning Bride” (“Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d,” not “Hell hath no fury…”) and “Born in the U.S.A.” (The Boss’ critique of the mistreatment of Vietnam War veterans by American society, not a patriotic anthem). The latter also brings up an interesting take on meaning and interpretation by Barthes in “The Death of the Author.”

If you think I’m being picky, consider that one of the contestants in my green room group didn’t win his episode largely for two reasons: He used the wrong preposition in one of his responses on a quote, and he gave an internationally accepted name of an object instead of a more specific one. Let me be clear: He is a very smart guy, and I agree with his international answer. The game is just brutally hard! If you’re going to memorize millions (yes, millions) of facts, then you have to learn them correctly from the outset and weed out any Mandela effects.

Why did you choose the Arthur Graduate School for your MBA?

I chose ECU because the online program is asynchronous and top quality. The flexibility allowed me to do schoolwork on my own time while developing technologies and growing a corporation. The asynchronous aspect was particularly important because of my health. I have to function on a highly idiosyncratic schedule, and getting to class at set times would have been impossible. I don’t think any of my professors knew I was ill, but they probably noticed me sometimes taking tests at 3 a.m.

Running a business while working on my MBA helped me to immediately apply concepts from school. In turn, this encouraged me to engage more with my studies. I especially enjoyed discussing concepts with other students who worked in different contexts and industries. In this regard, I learned how to communicate ideas to people in different fields. I develop industrial technologies in one world, but I was able to augment my understanding of leadership and power dynamics by listening to the stories of students who managed restaurants, worked as flight attendants and sold medical equipment.

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