Mark Burnett and Donald Trump, the minds behind NBC's upcoming reality series "The Apprentice," don't mean to call other reality show contestants chumps, but they're pretty happy with the results of their selection process.

"All of these 16 participants are absolutely brilliant young people." Trump says of his potential recruits. "They are exactly the opposite of what the reality show business seems to have become."

Take that, all you potential Average Joes, Survivors, Big Brothers or Joe Millionaires.

With Trump as their "master," the group of 16 "Apprentice" contestants will compete over 15 episodes for the chance at a dream job in the multifaceted Trump Organization. In two teams of eight, the players complete a wide variety of tasks in the New York business world. The winners are pampered, while the losers are fired, one at a time.

The contestants come from a wide variety of backgrounds and were culled through an exhaustive search that began with well over 100,000 applicants.

"One thing you're going to really see on this show was none of these people had ever applied for a reality show before," "Survivor" guru Burnett promises. "It's very fresh and the characters are just astounding."

The oldest of the contestants is 36-year-old Tammy Lee, a Seattle-based stockbroker who used to be an Assistant Vice President at Merrill Lynch. The youngest is Jessie Connors, from New Richmond, Wisconsin, who, at 21, runs chiropractic clinics and is a realtor in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

While early word on the show suggested that it would feature a clash of college-educated, "book smart" candidates and candidates with "street smarts" who may not have gone to college at all, the field ultimately appears to have been weighed towards the former. At least five potential apprentices appear to have advanced degrees, led by David Gould, a 31-year-old venture capitalist who holds both an M.D. and an MBA. Only two competitors don't mention college in their bios.

The casting process was rigorous.

"They went through enormous amounts of testing, not only to verify all their claims of their SAT scores and their GPAs," Burnett says. "We then hired investigators to knock on their neighbors doors... We gave them six hours of psychological testing, plus IQ tests and a couple of them tested in the genius range."

The geniuses of NBC's "The Apprentice" will be unveiled on Thursday, Jan. 8 at 8:30 p.m. ET. After the show's 90-minute premiere, it will settle into the 8 p.m. slot on Wednesdays.

Here's a list of all 16 finalists:

Heid Bressler, 30, a sales rep from Philadelphia

Katrina Campins, 24, a realtor from Miami

Jessie Connors, 21, a business owner from New Richmond, Wisc.

Jason Curis, 24, a property owner from Detroit

Kristi Frank, 30, a restaurant and property owner from Bel Air

David Gould, 31, a venture capitalist from New York

Amelia Henry, 30, a dot.com-er from Austin, Tex.

Bowie Hogg, 25, a motivational speaker from Dallas

Kwame Jackson, 29, an investment manager from New York

Tammy Lee, 36, a stockbroker from Seattle

Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, 29, a doctoral student from Washington, D.C.

Troy McClain, 32, a mortgage lender from Boise, Idaho

Bill Rancic, 32, founder of cigarsaroundtheworld.com from Chicago

Sam Solovey, 27, a sales and business development overseer from Chevy Chase, Mary.

Ereka Ventrini, 27, a marketing manager from New York

Nick Warnock, 27, a Xerox salesman from Los Angeles