Andy D. Litinsky ’04, yelling top center and wearing a bathrobe, shows the same fighting spirit during a Harvard-Clarkson hockey game last March that he currently exhibits in the boardroom of NBC’s reality television show “The Apprentice.”

Andy D. Litinsky ’04 left Harvard early last spring with a single suitcase and a plane ticket to New York.

His professor and friend Steven R. Levitsky remembers a curious e-mail he received from Litinsky the night before his departure.

“He said there was something he had to do, but he couldn’t tell us why [he was going],” said Levitsky, who teaches government and social science at Harvard. “It was the classic movie line for someone going off on a secret CIA mission.”

But Litinksy was headed for a mission more challenging than mere CIA work: His task is to last 15 weeks proving himself in NBC’s “The Apprentice,” a gold-gilded world dominated by Donald “The Donald” Trump and the gospel of greed.

The top-rated new show last season is like “Survivor” for the business world, where the winner gets to head up one of Trump’s myriad corporations.

On last Thursday’s season premiere, the 18 competitors assembled in Trump Towers. They eyed their rivals in silence for a few minutes, and then entered the infamous boardroom where contestants get booted off by Donald Trump himself.

“I don’t like going in there and dealing with the fact that someone has to get fired every time,” Litinsky said on TV. “I want to win.”

NBC does not allow contestants to speak to the media until they have been fired.

He wants to see Trump as much as possible, but “not in the boardroom.”

ALREADY A WINNER

Yet in many respects, Litinsky has already beaten the competition. NBC spokesperson Jim Dowd said more than one million people applied for the second season of the show.

He said the show looks for candidates who represent a diversity of business talent, and after interviews and psychological screenings, some candidates fly to Los Angeles for a practice boardroom session with Trump.

The contestants stay in a spacious Manhattan suite of rooms during the shooting, which Litinsky compared favorably to his former set-up at Harvard.

“It’s bigger than my dorm room,” Litinsky said, glancing in awe.

STRUGGLING UPWARD

Litinsky, 23, is the youngest candidate on “The Apprentice,” but said during the show that his youth, energy and Harvard-groomed intellect were all assets, not liabilities.

“I’m here because I’m a nationally ranked debater,” Litinsky bragged. “So when I get into the boardroom, I feel like that’s my home turf.”

A south Florida native, Litinksy is the youngest of four brothers, which helped him learn to read people at an early age.

“He was kind of quiet,” said Jim Litinsky, one of Andy’s brothers. “He’d absorb everything. You’d see him sitting in a corner of a room full of adults, and his eyes would be darting all around him.”

Litinksy learned to speak up for himself.

In 1999, Litinsky won the national championships of the National Forensic League in the extemporaneous speaking commentary division.

“I’ve argued with him for 20 years,” said his brother, Jim Litinksy. “He is an incredible thinker. He goes into the room more prepared than anyone else. That’s a trait of really successful people.”

Litinsky skipped his final semester at Harvard, but still graduated cum laude last June.

During his three and a half years at Harvard, Litinsky distinguished himself by co-founding the Harvard AIDS Coalition, participating at the Institute of Politics and building a personal reputation as a campus funny man.

“There is so much more in terms of Andy compared to Donald,” Levitsky said.

The free-spirited Litinksy installed an antenna on the roof of Dunster House so that he and his roommates could access cable television. When University officials complained, Litinsky petitioned to prevent Harvard from dismantling his creation. Though he eventually lost the antenna, he managed to keep his cable access for seven months.

“Andy’s very funny, very confident,” said Sara E. Padua ’06, who remembers his comedy acts from Dunster’s open-mic. “His whole blocking group always seemed to be having fun and being goofy.”

While Litinsky may have shown an eager interest in television, his friends did not expect he would wind up on prime-time so soon.

“It was weird to see him on TV, because he was just a normal guy I had classes with,” Esther J. Olivarez ’04 said.

Olivarez learned that intellect is not the most important trait on screen during her stint as soap opera intern. “What it comes down to is charisma because they don’t want someone who’s boring, no matter how smart they are,” she said.

Matt L. Butler ’04 said his friend had the confidence and strength to beat out the competition and win the apprenticeship with Trump. “When you go into the boardroom, you have to stick to your guns, like Andy does,” Butler said. “Donald is smart. He’s not an intellectual, but he goes for the big picture.”

A FLAIR FOR FUN

Butler said Litinsky was able to use the course material from a class they took together last fall, Science B-35, “How to Build a Habitable Planet.”

When Trump told each team of nine candidates to design an original, marketable toy for Mattel, Litinsky recalled a category of creature that he had studied in a Core class.

“I really like crustaceans, I don’t know if that’s just me,” Litinsky said, pointing to a diagram of a good-versus-evil game involving playing cards and action figures.

“What you’re dealing with is this interesting lobster torso,” Litinsky said with a smile to his teammates and the TV audience.

Though the final product, which Litinsky called “Crustacean Nation,” did not meet with Donald’s approval, it did call attention to Litinsky’s ability to lead older and more experienced candidates.

Mike Renan, who was Litinsky’s teaching fellow for the class, said he was planning on holding Thursday-night study breaks in his tutor suite to watch “The Apprentice.”

He is rooting for Litinsky, despite the fact that Litinsky was a “wise-ass” and a “cocky bastard” in section last year.

Renan thought that Litinsky’s self-confidence would be his tragic flaw and ultimately lead to his dismissal. “He won’t win because he’s too cocky,” Renan said.

But even if Litinsky wins, his professor Levitsky says it’s a waste to use a Harvard education to pursue Trump-like goals.

“The last thing that I hope to produce in my students is a Trump apprentice,” Levitsky said. “But Andy is a really smart, articulate, personable kid who can go very far in whatever he chooses to do.”

—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.