Win Tuition

Short-lived Game Show created by Henry Winkler for GSN which ran from December 5, 2002 to April 1, 2003.

The show was a standard Q&A with a school theme. Each category was separated into 12 "grades", with material appropriate to each. First through fifth were basic buzz-ins worth $100. Sixth through eighth grades were questions with multiple answers, and the lowest scorer was "expelled" by this point. The two remaining contestants played the "High School" round for 9th through 12th grades. Whoever scored higher after this went to the "Desk of Destiny" bonus round. Here, $50,000 in college tuition was at stake.

The following Game Show tropes appear in Win Tuition:

• Bonus Round: Answer 10 questions in 60 seconds. Get them right and you win $50,000. Lose and you get $250 per right answer.
• Bonus Space: A variant. The first player to buzz-in on the Middle School round won a $200 bonus, either in quarters (for washing machines) or as a Domino's Pizza gift certificate.
• Lifelines: In the High School round, each player had one "Cut Class" card, which they could use to force the opponent to answer.
• Personnel:
  • The Announcer: Burton Richardson.
  • Game Show Host: Marc Summers, best known for |Double Dare.
  • Lovely Assistant: Subverted with "Gorgeous George" Davidson, a short, bald male model who brought out props related to the questions. He often acted as if he would rather be anywhere else.
• Unexpectedly Obscure Answer: Some material was rather tough for the grade level. Asking about the fate of Henry VIII's wives is hardly brain-breaking, but putting it at the fifth-grade level is a little much.

Other tropes include:

• April Fools' Day: As part of the network's April Fool's Day switcheroo, Kennedy of Friend or Foe hosted what ended up being the last original episode of the series. In addition, GSN vice-president and game show fan Bob Boden played the "Answer Kid".
• Negated Moment of Awesome: The first $50,000 win happened on the first episode, but the contestant never got his money because it was later discovered that he had been on Russian Roulette earlier that year. (Contestants can't appear on more than one game show within a one-year period, or three in ten.)
• Product Placement: For Domino's Pizza.
• Punny Name
• Sound Effect Bleep: On the first episode, the Bonus Round winner said something that had to be censored by a cat's screech.