The Apprentice (season 3)

The Apprentice 3 is the third season of The Apprentice. It premiered January 20, 2005 on NBC. This was the last season to land in the Top 20 Nielsen ratings, ranking at #15, with an average of 13.96 million viewers.

The winner of this season was George Harned.

This season was preceded by Season 2 and followed by Season 4.

Season changes
In this season, two groups of nine were divided into book smarts (who took the name Magna Corp) and street smarts (called Net Worth) referring to those with and without a completed college education. This replaced the Battle of the Sexes concept used on The Apprentice 1 and The Apprentice 2.

Trump continued the twist introduced in the previous season that allowed the winning project manager to be exempt from firing should their team lose the next task. However, he discontinued the Season 2 option that allowed the losing project manager to bring three people into the boardroom as opposed to two, after it was only used twice during the season. Trump did make one exception to this rule and allowed Audrey to bring three people into the Boardroom when she lost a challenge, but she ended up being fired anyway.

Candidates
The Net Worth team contained four men and five women, and the Magna Corp team contained five men and four women. Trump stated that "You just have to be business-smart", no matter what kind of smarts you have. Trump also pointed out one other major difference between the two groups – those with only a high school diploma earn three times as much as the college grads.

Candidates
Both teams, or "corporations", were divided by their gender.