Brandeis Stories

By David Levin
September 17, 2024

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Watch Andy Rueda, GSAS MS’24, describe his approach to competing on "Survivor."

This fall, Andy Rueda, GSAS MS’24, will fulfill a lifelong dream: He’ll compete against 17 other cast members on the CBS reality TV show “Survivor.” 

This season’s show, which was actually filmed last spring, places each group of contestants on a remote tropical island to fend for themselves as they make fires, find food, and build shelter. Along the way, the “castaways” also compete in challenges that test their mental and physical abilities, and can earn rewards to help them succeed — like a pot or a machete — or gain immunity from being eliminated. The last person standing wins the show’s $1 million prize.

“I've been such a super fan of this show for the last decade of my life — it’s such a call to adventure. There’s really nothing else like it,” Rueda said. “As soon as I saw it for the first time, I started thinking, ‘I could do that.’”

He mulled the idea for several years before he submitted his first audition tape, a short amateur video, to CBS producers. When he got no reply, he sent a second. Then a third. His fourth tape, which he sent in 2022, finally caught the casting team’s eye. After a long and complex casting process, he found himself on a flight to Fiji where he joined the show for filming in early 2024.

Rueda thinks it’s no coincidence that he made it onto “Survivor” while studying at Brandeis. Earning his masters’ degree, he said, was the culmination of more than 10 years of personal growth and evolution. After graduating from New York University in 2015 with a degree in film and television production, he switched gears entirely, taught himself to code, and worked his way into the tech industry, where he landed contract positions with Meta and Pinterest. That experience sparked an interest in machine learning and AI, which ultimately prompted him to apply to the master’s program in computational linguistics at Brandeis.

His time at Brandeis instilled a mindset that served him well on the reality show, he said. His peers and faculty mentors pushed him to venture outside of his comfort zone, tackle hard challenges head-on, and be true to his own passions — all traits the CBS casting team looks for in a successful “Survivor” candidate.

“The Computational Linguistics program at Brandeis gave me a ton of self-confidence. Even though I always had “Survivor” in the back of my mind, or sometimes the forefront of my mind, the master’s program let me apply myself more intensely than I ever had before,” he said. “It made me want to capitalize on every opportunity given to me when I was there — to be a TA for the hardest classes, to be a research assistant, to publish papers.”

His hard work and perseverance paid off. Before graduating in August, Rueda was presented with the Aravind K. Joshi Award for Outstanding Achievement in Computational Linguistics, one of the highest honors that students in the program can receive.

Even after unlocking two of his life goals in a matter of months — appearing on “Survivor” and earning his master’s degree — Rueda’s energy still seems unchecked. He’s taking a breather to move from Waltham back to New York City, his home for the past decade, but then plans to do what he does best: dive fully into the next big thing that comes his way.

“I feel like my momentum is still going forward, and I do know that whatever sort of challenges come next, whatever career opportunities present themselves, I'm going to pursue them with passion,” he said. “I know myself better than ever now. I have a better sense of my strengths, my weaknesses, what I want to do in this world — so I’m just riding the wave. I'm riding the wave.”

To watch Rueda compete against his fellow castaways, watch Survivor on CBS on Wednesdays at 8 p.m.