CU junior in the hot seat, Feb. 9, on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?'

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Natalie Gulyas does.

Cornell junior Natalie Gulyas, left, answers questions from TV host Meredith Viera on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" The episode airs locally on WIXT-TV, Feb. 9. Buena Vista Television

Gulyas gets her turn to phone a friend, poll the audience and request a 50-50. She will face TV host Meredith Viera while sitting in the hot seat of the television quiz show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Monday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. Locally, the show airs on WIXT-TV (Channel 9 on Time Warner Cable).

The Cornell junior from Denver majors in meteorology in the university's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Gulyas applied to be a contestant last July during a special online sign-up period. From there she went to New York City to take the show's placement test, and after she passed the test, the show's producers interviewed her. A week later, Gulyas received a postcard telling her she was in the contestant pool.

"I was checking my mail, I saw the postcard, and I ran out of the post office [in downtown Ithaca] to tell my mom," said Gulyas. Her mother was waiting in the car but using a cell phone. "I couldn't tell her right away because she was still on her phone. After she hung up, we were all excited about it."

Just before Thanksgiving, the show's producers called Gulyas to ask if she would like to participate in the show's college edition. "Of course," she said, and she joined students from Harvard, New York University, Fordham, Queens College, University at Buffalo, Hofstra and Providence College at the Buena Vista Television studio in Orlando, Fla., in early January.

The price was right: For three days of videotaping, fun and sun, the students had a free run of Walt Disney World. Gulyas rode the Tower of Terror, Test Track, the Rock-n-Roller Coaster, Splash Mountain, Mission to Mars (where she quipped that Cornell was on Mars, again) and a safari, where she saw the mother and child elephants named Big Red and Little Red.

Before her trip to Florida, Gulyas obtained several quiz books and various almanacs on pop culture, to read up on past and current events.

Regardless of how Gulyas performs in the show's hot seat (she's not allowed to say how she did until the show airs), she plans on becoming a television meteorologist, a dream she has had since high school. While in high school, she spent an afternoon following meteorologist Larry Green at KCNC-TV in Denver and loved how the television and science process worked. She earned an associate's degree in science at Front Range Community College in Westminster, Colo., and transferred to Cornell two years ago to complete her bachelor's.