The other half of the application.

Everyone worries about the video. Almost nobody worries about the form, which is a long questionnaire you fill out at 11pm the night before the deadline. Lynne Spillman, who cast Survivor for eighteen years, put it as bluntly as anyone has: the application is 50% of the application process. You may get a ten for your video, and a poor application can chop that score in half.

What it asks

The forms can’t be linked here without a login, but people who’ve filled them out describe the same territory. Your basics — where you live, what you do, your relationships, your social media. Whether you have tattoos. Describe yourself in three words. Three words your friends would use. Your perfect day. Your health, including your mental health. For the Race: how you know your teammate, which the casting site calls the most important question on the form.

Then consent — to a background check, and later to medical and psychological evaluation.

What they’re reading for

Specifics. Spillman: if you say you’re competitive, give examples. The written form is where adjectives go to die. “I’m a leader” is nothing. “I run a 40-person kitchen and I’ve fired my own brother” is a person.

Effort. Kass, repeatedly: no one-word answers, no “yes” and “no” — take some time and do your best to explain everything. Spillman adds the other failure: don’t overthink it, and don’t fill it out too quickly. Katherine Woodman applied to Big Brother 27 on a whim after a couple of glasses of wine and got on, so the bar isn’t perfection. But casting can tell the difference between an evening and eleven minutes.

Consistency with the tape. Casting reads your social media before your first interview to check that you’re the person on the video. The form is part of the same check. If the tape is a whirlwind and the form is monosyllables, one of them is lying.

The rule about honesty

Kass, in writing: “Don’t lie. Surprises are the worst.” Tell them everything up front.

This is the most practical advice on the form and the least followed. The background check on these shows is civil, criminal, financial and driving history. Kass’s experience is that it rarely disqualifies anyone by itself. What disqualifies people is an item they left off the form, because casting then assumes there’s more. Spillman’s version was even less gentle: don’t try to be the villain if your life hasn’t been that way, because they’ll call you out and they’ll break you.

The same logic applies to the psych test later. Probst, who has taken Survivor’s twice, describes it as designed to learn how you behave, not to find something wrong. The people who get in trouble are the ones whose form, tape and test describe three different humans.

The eligibility fine print

Read it once. It’s short, and it’s where the surprises are.

• Survivor: 18 and over (19 in Alabama, Nebraska and Wyoming; 21 in Mississippi and D.C.), a U.S. or Canadian citizen. If you were a finalist in Los Angeles before, don’t reapply — casting keeps your file and re-reviews it, and new submissions from past finalists are ignored. Employees of CBS and the production companies, their immediate families wherever they live, and anyone in their household are out. So are previous contestants and their immediate families. You can’t run for public office until your season has aired.
• Big Brother: 21 by June 1 of the season year, U.S. citizen living in the U.S., fit for about 100 days of it, and the same public-office rule.
• The Amazing Race: both of you 18 and over (state exceptions apply; open calls have asked for 21), both U.S. citizens with a valid passport and a driver’s licence, and typically known each other at least a year.

Every show requires a new application and a new video each cycle. The Race says explicitly that old tapes aren’t carried over.

The photo

Kass’s rules, which nobody else has improved on: two recent, clear photos — one headshot, one full-body. No sunglasses. No hats. No old pictures. No glamour headshot that doesn’t look like the person who’ll turn up.

The order of operations

Fill out the form before you go to an open call, not at the venue. Finish it before you upload the video — the video doesn’t submit itself. And do the boring bit properly. Nobody has ever been cast because of their form. Plenty of people have been quietly dropped because of it.