Mayim Bialik hosts the 'Jeopardy! National College Championship'

LOS ANGELES -- Mayim Bialik brings "Jeopardy!" to prime time to kick off a new tournament: 36 students from 36 different schools get the chance to compete for a grand prize of $250,000.

Those are three dozen coveted spots, considering 26,000 students from more than 4,000 schools auditioned!

We'll see our same favorite "Jeopardy!" game, with a few tweaks.

"The categories are a little bit different. I don't want to say they're easier because they're not. But there's definitely categories that are, let's say, more relevant for this generation," said Bialik. "These are the kind of young people who are literally competing for the glory of winning academically and intellectually. And that's also really fun."

While we've seen college tournaments on "Jeopardy!" before, this is the first time in prime time, and 36 contestants, as opposed to the usual 15, gives it more national representation.

"This is our 'Jeopardy!' version of March Madness," said Bialik. "There are young people from colleges many of us have never heard of or in towns that we've never heard of. There's representation from public schools, private schools, historically Black colleges, small schools, big schools. It really is a beautiful representation."

The "Jeopardy! National College Championship" kicks off Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC.