ANTHONY AREND (SFS ’80), FLIES ACROSS THE GASTON HALL STAGE, ARMS FLAILING IN MID-AIR, VOICE BOOMING THROUGH THE MAJESTIC AUDITORIUM. HE HAS HIS AUDIENCE CAPTIVATED.

Donning a light pink Oxford shirt with a French collar and gentlemanly suspenders, Arend, a professor in the government department and the director of the Institute for International Law and Politics, simultaneously gives off the appearance that he is one of Georgetown’s most well-regarded scholars and that he has something of a personality. When he begins to leap across the stage (Arend does not do podiums) and pace about the packed auditorium’s center aisle, gesturing loudly with his hands and eschewing a microphone, he confirms just that for the GAAP Convocation crowd.

As Arend makes his 10-minute speech that includes, among other things, references to KC & The Sunshine Band, Usher and Fergie, as well as an emboldening call to service and a lesson in the Jesuit motto “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam,” spectators nudge forward in their seats. Their postures become just a bit more upright. Weary frowns are turned into fixated smiles. After Arend leaves the stage, Christie Fraser (MSB ’08), a student speaker, charms the crowd with a funny story about the film “Georgetown Forever” (they don’t know any better than to be impressed), and tells the audience, “Once you’re a Hoya, you’re connected to every single country all over the planet.”

Next, Fr. Christopher Steck, S.J., shows everyone that priests aren’t so bad, setting them at ease with the tried-and-true one-liner, “I’ve been asked if my parents were Jesuits.”

Then, GAAP board member Hailey Morton (SFS ’08) reflects poignantly, “Georgetown always and forever will be our home.”

And to cap it all off, the Chimes literally run into the auditorium and regale the crowd with the fight song.

Outside, after everyone has filed into Healy Circle, guests are greeted by a cool, late March afternoon. The sky is blue, the sun is still shining on the horizon and Georgetown’s postcard-perfect front lawn is looking every bit the selling point it is meant to be. The accepted students, almost every single one, exit the building beaming. If they’ve been worn out by a whirlwind series of events that began 10 hours earlier at 8 a.m., you wouldn’t know it.

It is the perfect confluence of events. What better way to convince hundreds of high school seniors to pick Georgetown over the dozens of other schools like Brown, Northwestern and Stanford that many of them will inevitably be admitted to?

“It was really impressive,” says Brendan McElroy, an accepted student from Haddonfield, N.J. “I thought it was very persuasive and also very genuine.”

McElroy is one the many students who come to campus each spring for Georgetown Admissions Ambassadors Program weekend. Tuesday, less than two weeks after his March 28-29 visit, McElroy sent in his confirmation and deposit, officially making him part of the Class of 2012. Each year, between 70 and 75 percent of the students who attend a GAAP weekend choose to enroll at Georgetown, almost 20 points higher than the university’s overall yield, GAAP leaders say. To be sure, part of the reason for the jump is that many students who attend the program are already sure they will enroll and that many of those who have no intention of enrolling don’t bother coming for a GAAP weekend.

But there is also something about the events that enamors visitors while still presenting Georgetown in a strikingly unfiltered and authentic manner. And more than just revealing what the future class of Hoyas will be like, GAAP weekends turn the microscope around on current members of the Georgetown community, revealing what really distinguishes them.

*
THE COMMOTION IN RED SQUARE IS UNUSUAL FOR A FRIDAY MORNING. A tour group moves past Healy Hall, a short mother and her tall daughter scurry through the front gates, anxious to check in for GAAP weekend, and families rest on green benches, contently sipping their free coffee.

I meet the McElroy family in Healy Circle shortly after 9 a.m. Brendan, the accepted student, stands about 6-foot-3 and looks even taller when you take into consideration his rail-like skinniness. Like many of the weekend guests, he is slightly overdressed, as if he was unsure of what sort of weather awaited him in the District. His appearance is one that is distinctly bookish, but he also wears an affable smile on his face much of the time.

Brendan is joined by his parents, John, a geotechnical engineer, Mary, a structural engineer, and sister Bridget, a 15-year-old high school sophomore. As a foursome, the McElroys appear to be middle-class, educated and friendly, all of which turn out to be true.

A senior at Haddonfield Memorial, a public high school of about 1,200 in a town of roughly 13,000, McElroy is almost too perfect an example of what a prospective Georgetown student is like; smart, interested in languages and foreign relations, middle class, white. And, yes, from New Jersey. He is quiet and introverted for most of the time I’m with him, but the recording on his cell phone voice mail, which warns the caller that leaving a message may be the last thing he or she does, reveals a more playful side.

He has come to Georgetown with the university high on his list, though he cannot say for sure whether he will attend. He also has a very specific question he wants to get answered. He wants to know whether he can take School of Foreign Service classes, even though he was accepted into the College, and how he can combine his passion for languages (French and Russian) with a burgeoning interest in international relations.

The McElroys begin their tour of the school — Brendan, Bridget and Mary have already been to campus, John has not — with a casual walk around. They skip the formal tours since they took one last summer on their first visit and opt for a self-guided version.

Talk centers around the weather (yes, it gets hot in D.C. during the summer), the overwhelming New Jersey presence at the school and the other colleges Brendan applied to.

He is in to Carlton and Macalester, both in Minnesota, and still waiting on Middlebury and Brown. Georgetown is at or near the top of the list, but of course, if Brown or Middlebury come calling, he’d have to listen.

“I think he wants to be as far away from me as possible,” Mary McElroy says.

“No, that’s not true,” Brendan counters with a hint of the annoyance that any high schooler feels when his mom makes a joke to a stranger. “It’s not important to me, but being on the East coast is fine with me.”

To the seasoned Georgetown veteran, a walk past Leavey, especially this early in the morning, is a mindless exercise. But to an outsider, new things stand out.

“I thought there would be more of a mixture of cultures,” Mary McElroy admits. The facts confirm her observation — Georgetown is over 70 percent white, according to the office of communications. An unofficial perusal of the GAAP crowd reveals a group not much different from the university’s overall demographics.

Soon, we find ourselves near Leo’s, and we see Roy Hibbert climbing the New South hill. He receives blank stares.

“That’s Roy Hibbert, our 7-foot-2 basketball star,” I tell them.

Unlike many prospective students, the McElroys plead ignorance when it comes to the basketball team. Later, we see a few visitors gawking at Hibbert and when Fraser mentions much later in her speech watching the North Carolina Elite Eight game last March, a few in the crowd applaud. One man asks GAAP President A.J. Brown (SFS ’08) where he would be that weekend if Georgetown had not lost to Davidson. Generally speaking, with the Hoyas’ renewed hardwood success, basketball is a major selling point, even to those who simply plan to watch it from the Verizon Center stands. But for McElroy, old-fashioned academics are still the main area of interest.

*
I’VE BEEN TO EGYPT.”

“I’VE SURFED THE NORTH SHORE OF HAWAII.”

“I’VE SEEN JULIA ROBERTS.”

So it goes with this game, “I’ve done something you haven’t,” part of the icebreakers session, which falls second in the day’s schedule. After the students listened to welcome speeches by Todd Olson, Vice President for Student Affairs, and Dan Fishman (SFS ’08), the group breaks into smaller groups for an activity designed to get the prospective students interacting with one another. The icebreakers display in equal parts the unique experiences each of these accepted students have had and the supreme awkwardness these 17- and 18-year-olds still embody.

Most seem to have traveled abroad. Many have taken part in some sort of service trip. A few cop to having a belly button ring.

Brendan McElroy stands just far enough outside the circle that he does not draw too much attention but not so far away that he is left out. He volunteers that he’s traveled to Russia. He doesn’t say much else.

T-shirts emblazoned with familiar names like Nobles, Delbarton, St. Peter’s Prep and Loomis Chafee can be spotted in each of the groups, which are spread about Copley Lawn.

The icebreakers are meant to get the jock from Delbarton and the future doctor from rural South Dakota to stop giving each other strange looks and start talking. They might be roommates next year.

“We used to have icebreakers later on in the day and we thought that it defeated the purpose because you’d wait until 2 p.m. to finally interact with other kids that got accepted, so we wanted something right away where you could get to know people and feel a little bit more comfortable with the kids that were there,” Brown says.

Morton says that in designing the icebreakers, the GAAP board is keenly aware of the situation the students are in.

“I just felt so nervous and awkward and this is going to be so scary to be coming to a new school where all these people are going to be my classmates, and I don’t know any of these people,” she says of her first visit to Georgetown. “So I think about how they feel and try to make it easier that way.”

*
VIVALDI’S “WINTER” PLAYS PEACEFULLY IN THE BACKGROUND, BUT ACTIVITY IN THE ICC IS BEGINNING TO HEAT UP. IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES, THE ROOM WILL GROW FULL.

With icebreakers finished, it is time for a string of more informative sessions. First, the campus spotlight. Across campus, panels of students and administrators offer their experience and expertise on the issues in which accepted students and their parents seem most interested. Financial Aid and the Office of International Programs, the event I’ve attended, attract the largest crowds.

Brendan traveled to Russia two summers ago and his interest in the country has only grown since. He hopes to return during college. He’s not alone in wanting to find out how to go abroad.

Over 50 percent of students go abroad, says Liz Everson, the OIP’s presenter and a senior overseas study adviser. Forty-six percent of college students, 76 percent of the SFS and 47 percent of the MSB all study overseas. The national average is 10 percent.

“The philosophy at Georgetown has always included an international component,” Everson says.

She outlines that studying abroad is an integral part of the Georgetown experience, not something that is extra or an add-on, that the cost of going abroad is comparable to studying on the Hilltop, and that the OIP works hard to monitor situations overseas and make sure students remain safe.

A few parents scattered about the room exhale.

When the session ends, Brendan McElroy walks to the front of the room to ask a question. He still wants to know how he might be able to combine SFS classes with a study of several languages.

While he waits, his dad confides that for Brendan, academic concerns are paramount.

“For what he wants to combine — languages plus international studies, politics, cultural experience — I think this is the place that is best suited,” John says. “If he was focusing solely on languages, which still may be the way he wants to go, there may be other options. Middlebury is very good at that. Personal attention, small classes, a lot of professor availability.” .

Are those concerns — classes and professors — what Brendan cares about most?

“Academics. Academics. Academics. He’s an academic guy. Not that he doesn’t care about the other stuff, he likes the atmosphere and the location. He likes the city,” John says.

Brendan returns, smiling.

“There’s very few barriers to studying in the SFS if you’re in the College,” Brendan says, “and there’s always the option of transferring.” He adds, “I’m much more reassured by learning all of this.”

Meanwhile, Mary sits in the financial aid seminar. There, they outline the coast of tuition, and room and board, and books and various fees, and transportation and everything else.

For many — most? — it’s overwhelming.

“I know when they were babies, we had financial planners say, ‘When your child goes to school, the cost of college will be 200-some thousand dollars,’” she explained earlier in the day. “I didn’t believe him. I should have believed him.”

“I haven’t gotten over the sticker shock of college yet.”

The McElroys are not alone. Georgetown tuition for fall 2008 totals over $37,000, with room and board another $12,000 and change. Of the 1,579 full-time freshman who enrolled last year, 881 applied for need-based aid and 632, or 40 percent, received it, according to College Board statistics. The average financial aid package totals $28,999.

These campus spotlights, according to GAAP leaders, tend to be more geared toward the parents than the students.

“Parents get into that,” Morton, the GAAP vice president, says. “It’s mostly for the parents. I feel like students can do ice breakers and talk in student panels all day.”

*
“WHAT DO YOU DO ON WEEKENDS?”

“HOW DOES THE NEW ALCOHOL POLICY AFFECT THINGS?”

“WHAT IS THE DATING AND RELATIONSHIP SCENE LIKE?”

Finally, after 20 minutes of agonizing inquiries about the weather, cheating and whether or not academics at Georgetown are overwhelming, the student life panel shifts to what all incoming students really want to know.

For the next half an hour, the three Georgetown students leading the group, two seniors and a freshman, all of which are girls (that’s abnormal, they assure me), get to regale the prospective students with tales of drinking and debauchery.

Here, just about anything, except academics, is in bounds. And, parents are given their own session with administrators, so as to make it less awkward for the students.

Usually, the GAAP leaders say, the student life panels begin slowly, with tame questions about classes or why the current students chose Georgetown. Today is no different.

Inevitably, the questions then shift towards parties, drinking, and, yes, hook ups.

And for their part, the panelists are honest with the students.

“Georgetown for the first two years is open parties. Everyone is welcome, you don’t have to pay,” says Thea Terenick, one of the vice presidents of GAAP.

“But there is stuff to do outside of parties,” the freshman chimes in.

Like go to bars.

“Chadwicks. If you’re actually 21, you don’t go,” the freshman says. “The ID pass back works.”

As for the new alcohol policy, the panelists assure the students that it’s not so bad. Having a party in your freshman dorm room, with the door constantly opening and closing, is a bad idea, they say.

Drinking aside, the panelists highlight Georgetown Programming Board and What’s After Dark activities, as well as the many guest speakers that come to campus.

And the dating scene? Are Georgetown students too busy? “I used to say it’s a relationship school, not a dating school,” Terenik says. “People are more likely to hook up than date.”

The freshman girl tells the group she did get asked to dinner earlier this year. By a senior.

Two girls in the audience exchange glances and gasp.

This type of candor is not out of the ordinary, Brown says. Honesty is the policy.

“I think the nice thing is we’ll never just feed them like a university line,” he says. “We’ll be completely honest with them.”

Concludes Morton: “There hasn’t ever really been a question that I’m just like no we can’t talk about that.”

*
GAAP PRIDES ITSELF ON THAT SENSE OF SINCERITY. The ability to tell it like it is one of the chief benefits of being an entirely student-run organization. While they do receive some administrative support (and funding) from the Office of Admissions, for the most part, the GAAP leaders put everything together themselves.

Neither Brown, the president nor Elizabeth Chausse (COL ’03), their liaison in the admissions office, is quite sure when GAAP as presently constituted was started, though they are sure that there was some sort of outreach program as far back as 1968 and that it has been student run for at least the past 15 years.

Brown and Terenik attended GAAP weekends and remember being blown away. For Terenik, the sense that Georgetown was not as competitive an environment as the University of Pennsylvania did the trick. For Brown, all it took was a walk from the Marriott to Healy to convince him that “I can go here.”

Morton, who hails from Wyoming, never made it to a GAAP weekend, but felt such a strong connection to the Georgetown student that called her after her acceptance that she decided to help with the calls the next year. That launched a much more extensive engagement with the organization.

After spending freshman year as trusted volunteers, Brown, Terenik and Morton joined the executive board the next year. They re-uped as juniors and now as seniors they comprise the leadership. The board has 10 additional members who are each charged with specific tasks.

Brown, Terenik and Morton are not salespersons. They are not out to peddle the school, to shine its bright spots and hide its negatives. They try not to look at the visitors as clients.

“Regardless of if they end up enrolling here, I want them to leave feeling that they’ve connected with Georgetown somehow, whether its academics or with the student body or with the campus itself or D.C.,” Terenik says. “I want them to feel like hey there’s something about Georgetown that I related to and I really like, I want them to be like Georgetown is cool, I like that.”

Chausse says that the university does not envision GAAP weekend as a sales pitch, either.

“The dean is really about not selling the university, just kind of trying to inform students on the opportunities here,” she says. “It’s more just — try to expose them of what it would be like to come here for four years.”

It also allows the GAAP leaders to relive their glory days, so to speak.

“You get to reconnect with why you chose Georgetown in the first place,” Brown says.

“We reconnect every weekend,” Morton continues.

“The emotion that I feel,” Terenik finishes, “I’ve heard Fr. Steck and Arend’s speech a million times but every time I’m like, ‘You’re so right.”

Many schools, the GAAP leaders say, make their accepted-student programs one-day events. Some have them during the week instead of on a Friday and Saturday. Many highlight administrators far more than students.

So it is the student-run factor that GAAP feels sets itself apart.

“I think it’s just the student ownership they get to see, just how much students do things here at Georgetown,” Chausse says.

*
“LIE DOWN, FOREVER LIE DOWN.”

Convocation ends with the fight song, and after a long day of events, which featured mock lectures by professors after the student life panel, “lie down” is what many of the visitors intend to do. Indeed, upwards of 10 hours long, the Friday of GAAP weekend is not for the timid. But does it make a difference?

“[My interest in going to Georgetown] was definitely strengthened,” he says. “The students and the teachers are really here because they want to be here. They really feel like this is the best place they can learn and improve themselves, and that’s really the most powerful impression I got during the day.”

So was the McElroys’ experience standard?

Pretty much, the GAAP leaders say.

For most, the decision is about balance, Morton says. Balancing academics and fun. Balancing different academic interests. Balancing the ambition to live in a city and the desire to have a campus.

“The sell for a lot of people is whether the student likes it, but you have to remember that they have to feel comfortable letting their son or daughter come here for four years,” Brown says. “So we really try to show the students that they’ll really enjoy their four years here and the parents that not only will their student be safe here but that four years at Georgetown means something once you leave here.”

Terenik adds that parents have to feel right about the investment they’re about to make.

“Not to put a price tag on an experience, but they are going to be paying 50 grand, and for parents, it’s a considerable amount of money for most people,” she says. “They’re like I really want to make sure the investment is the right one, because it is an investment. … I think most walk away comfortable leaving Georgetown as a choice.”

*
I REACH BRENDAN MCELROY ON HIS CELL PHONE ABOUT 10 DAYS AFTER HE HAS LEFT GEORGETOWN.

“Has the Hilltop made a lasting impression?” I ask.

“I’ve just been thinking about,” he says. “I really just got the impression when I was there and what I’ve still been thinking about is everyone else I met at GAAP weekend seemed like they wanted to be there and that they knew they’d be able to accomplish there that they wouldn’t be able to at other places, and I sort of got that impression from other people and I sort of felt that too.”

The second day of GAAP weekend, McElroy had the opportunity to see the four freshman dormitories, though he said that made little impression. The location of Georgetown though, made a big difference.

It’s hard to turn down the best university in the capital city of the most powerful country in the world.

“I think the location,” Mary McElroy said of the deciding factor. “I think he really liked the D.C. location, and he liked the programs there as well, but I really think the No. 1 was location and the proximity to the embassies and the area, I think that was the main reason.”

As for dad?

“I’m sure that the folks that are participating in GAAP weekend are really gung ho about Georgetown, and you have to take that into account, but there’s an overall wealth of energy and positive reaction to the school and I really, really like it,” John McElroy says.

And Bridget, the younger sister?

“I really liked it too,” she says. “I liked it best of the colleges we look at.”

Maybe GAAP won two over this weekend.