Visiting Campus: Scholarship Competitions

A lot of schools have competitive events where they host a hundred or so students for a weekend and at the end they award one student a scholarship.  These events are like the hunger games, except they don't tell you when you die so you have to just keep on fighting and sucking up and killing people even if you're pretty sure you were brutally murdered in the first six minutes.  This also means that you could very well be killed by someone who is already dead.  Sucks to be you, you just got zombied.

If you attend one of these weekends, keep in mind that they never stop watching you.  From the minute you sign in, they will be taking notes and analyzing your behavior.  Make sure you are always having a friendly, meaningful, and mildly intelligent conversation with someone.  You need to seem like the kind of person who will automatically make the whole campus more happy just by being on it.

Make sure you ask intelligent questions - ones that CAN'T be answered by your event packet or by a basic troll of the website.  Have a list of twenty or so questions that make you seem insightful, curious, open-minded, and/or unique.  For example, at a Christian school, you can ask "In what ways do you include faith in class on a regular basis?"  Ooh, now you have told them that you love Jesus, care about your faith, advocate for yourself, and have the ability to brown-nose.  Everyone needs to learn how to brown-nose at some point.

Wear something distinctive but not weird or edgy - a slouchy beanie, or a brightly colored shirt, or something.  That way, people will remember you more easily.

Do your best to show your leadership skillz but never seem like a dictator.  Yeah, good luck.  You can't ever be sure what these people are looking for, but they don't want a Peeta who just paints himself into a rock for three days.

So, to sum up: try to avoid being zombied, ask good questions, never stop talking to people, wear a hat, be a brown-noser (but subtly enough that they can pretend they don't notice), don't paint yourself into a rock.