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  Comedy Central Actor, game show host and Yale Law School alumnus Ben Stein will be taping "Win Ben Stein's Money" at UCLA beginning on Sept. 10.

By Suneal Kolluri

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Attention, broke college students: actor Ben Stein is coming to UCLA to give away his money.

Sadly, however, only five students will get a chance to win Ben Stein’s own version of a college scholarship as the successful game show “Win Ben Stein’s Money” will tape 10 shows this week in front of Royce Hall.

The show is leaving its normal shooting location in Hollywood for these three days to tape its two-week long “Back to School Challenge,” which will air on Comedy Central beginning Sept. 10.

The tapings will take place Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and UCLA students are welcome to watch the game show for free as it is being filmed.

“We’re having it at UCLA so the students at UCLA can come win, watch, cheer, scream and yell,” said Stein, the show’s host. “And we hope that they will.”

UCLA Campus Events helped organized the taping and is planning for a large group of students to come watch the show.

  Comedy Central UCLA students will be able to compete for big money and fabulous prizes on the "Win Ben Stein's Money" game show. “There are no tickets, it’s in Royce Quad. If they want to watch, they drop by and watch,” said UCLA campus events director Jack Raab.

“I think seating is about two hundred, but students are welcome to sit on the grass.”

“Win Ben Stein’s Money” is a game show that pits contestants against one another in a game of trivia as each correct answer wins them a little of Stein’s money. Halfway through the show, the contestant with the least money leaves and Stein enters the game to defend his loot.

“I’m the host, but I’m also a contestant,” Stein said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “That’s the point of the show.”

According to Stein, both UCLA’s reputation and the beauty of its campus contributed to its selection as a filming location.

“UCLA is one of the two most distinguished schools in Los Angeles, and we wanted to have it at a place that was beautiful and had a big spacious plaza and that was UCLA,” Stein added.

In the 10 shows to be filmed on-campus, students from all over the country will take a shot at the $5,000 grand prize.

Some shows will feature certain themes, as Stein will match up against groups of professors, sorority girls, fraternity guys and Harvard students.

But will any of them be able match up with the brain power of Stein and take away his money?

“I’ll be facing a total of thirty contestants because there are three contestants per game,” Stein said. “They’ll be very smart young people from all over America and I expect some of them to beat me ... I wouldn’t be surprised if someone from UCLA was to beat me.”

Though contestants are occasionally able to beat him, it doesn’t happen very frequently.

“He has been playing this game for a while, so he is used to it,” said executive producer Andrew Golder. “He doesn’t get shaken by being in the isolation ... it’s a home court advantage. But I think we’ll see him lose a couple times out there.”

Another special addition to the shows will be ex-host Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel, also the host of Comedy Central’s “The Man Show,” recently left the show, but is returning just for this particular series.

“He’s not going to come back to the show permanently, but he still is well with the show,” Golder said. “So he’s able to do these two weeks of special shows shot over the course of three shows. He’s just back for UCLA.”

In order to be on the show, contestants had to go through a fairly intensive screening process.

“They basically come to us. We give them a phone test, and if they pass that, they have to come take a written test. And if they pass that, we have sort of a mock game to test their personality. And after that, we put them on the show,” Golder said.

Jake Heath, a fourth-year political science student at UCLA, didn’t think the screening process was all that difficult to get through.

“I don’t think I went through the same selection process that a regular contestant would go through. Although similar, I think that because it is for a special taping of the show, they modified the process a little,” Heath said. “Basically it involved being interviewed, answering a few questions, and taking a small test. It wasn’t too difficult at all.”

Stein believes the success of his show has a lot to do with the college-aged audience.

“I love college kids and they love me,” Stein said. “And college is an age where kids are bringing a lot of knowledge into their heads and regurgitating it for exams, and we give them a very short exam.”

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