The Win of a Lifetime: RHS Alumni Wins $100,000 Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway

Since 2008, Dr. Pepper has held a highly anticipated Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway. This event is held annually at each of the major college football conference championship games. For this much-anticipated event, fifteen current college students are selected to compete for $100,000, by throwing footballs into an oversized Dr. Pepper can in the allotted amount of time. Three of these selected students are assigned to each of the five major conference championships.

For the 2023 round of the scholarship, Riverbend High School alumni, and current Ohio State junior, Gavin White, earned the opportunity of a lifetime, as he was selected as one of the fifteen competitors. 

White is currently studying Atmospheric Sciences at OSU and aspires to eventually become a meteorologist. To hone in on his passion for meteorology, White created his 60 second submission video to look like a mock weather broadcast. In the video he explained what he wishes to fulfill in his career and how the scholarship money will help him to achieve this goal.

Upon submission, White had to wait, and remain hopeful as Dr. Pepper sifted through the submissions and chose the finalists. Finally, in early November, White received a call from Dr. Pepper informing him of his qualification as one of the 15 competitors. White was selected to compete at the Big 12 Championship Game in Arlington, Texas on December 2, 2023.

As you can only imagine, on the day of the game the anticipation had built up into pure nervousness inside of White. He says, “I was constantly jumping around and trying to shake out my nerves as best I could.” 

That was, until White and his competitor were sent out onto the field surrounded by hundreds of cameras and tens of thousands of fans. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with a sense of calm that was, as he described, “...a kind of peace that can only be explained of as from God.”

The competition began with multiple rounds of tying between the two competitors. Everyone was in disbelief because no one had been expecting the competition to go on for so long. White says, “Honestly, it was more shock than anything that we kept tying.”

After a few rounds White’s competitor was declared winner and was awarded the $100,000 grand prize. White says, “I was disappointed in myself, but happy for my competitor.”

However, no one knew what would spiral out over the succeeding hours as spectators had noticed a scoring error, in White’s favor, and took to social media to try and make everything right.

Eventually, Dr. Pepper, seeing the uprising on social media, decided to award the $100,000 scholarship to both, White and his competitor due to the error.

With this news, White says, “I was overcome with pure joy at that point, I think I even cried!

As a result of White winning this scholarship, he will now be able to graduate from Ohio State debt-free, and then he will continue on to receive his master’s degree in meteorology. White explains that once he earns his master’s degree he will be off into the workforce to work as a full-time meteorologist.

When asked how it felt to watch Gavin compete and eventually win the grand prize, his parents comment, “There was certainly a mix of emotions. There was excitement, stress, shock, disbelief, just to name a few!”

They went on to say, “It was such a surreal feeling to know Gavin had a mission to find the way to pay for college and he successfully completed that mission.”