University Challenge results, 1998

These are the results of the series which began on 10 September 1997 and concluded with the final on the 21 April 1998. Consistently shown at 20:00 on BBC2, the show moved several times between Wednesday and Tuesday in the schedules. The winners of each of the twelve first-round shows progressed to the second round, as did the four highest-scoring losing teams.

The 1998 champions were thus Paul O'Donnell, Phil Jones, Sarah Fitzpatrick, and Alex de Jongh, students of PPE, Physics, Modern History and English, and History respectively, and Magdalen thus became the first team to be awarded the trophy two years in succession. The trophy was presented to them by zoologist Richard Dawkins.

When asked whether he was a fan of University Challenge, Prof Dawkins stated that it is his favourite programme, and added:
I'm conducting a campaign at Oxford with my colleagues to make them abolish the A-Level as the criterion for admitting students, and substitute it with University Challenge. I'm very serious about this; the kind of mind you need to win University Challenge - it's not the knowledge that matters - but it's the retentive mind to pick things up wherever you are that you need at university too.

This year there were two special programmes. The first was between the four finallists of the final series of Mastermind this year, Clare Ockwell, Andrea Weston, Colin Cadby, and Anne Ashurst, and the 1997 champions Magdalen College, Oxford.

The second was a match between the 'four most outstanding contestants from last year's series' from University Challenge and its US equivalent College Bowl. Representing the UK were Martin Heighway (Open), Stephen Pearson (Manchester), Cormac Bakewell (Queen's, Belfast), and Colin Andress (Magdalen, Oxford). College Bowl sent Eric Tentarelli (Cornell), Robert Margolis (Texas at Dallas), John Harris (Virginia), and Mark Staloff (Harvard).

Winners are given in bold, and the four highest scoring first round losers in italics.