Minority high school seniors and their families flooded the ISU campus Friday during the annual Preview Day for National Engineering Week. The students are recipients of scholarship offers from Iowa State, and visited to experience college life with current ISU minority students.”We want them to have a chance to socialize with current minority students to learn about their experience of the school, town and engineering college,” said Monica Bruning, engineering undergraduate program coordinator.Breaking through the early-morning ice, Thomas Hill, vice president for Students Affairs, pulled up his pant leg displaying long-johns under his suit and tie. He joked to students from far southern states that he, a native of New Orleans, had to get used to the cold weather.Guy Howard, sophomore in computer engineering, attended Preview Day last year. He is a George Washington Carver Scholar and a National Achievement Scholar. Howard said he got ahead by using Iowa State’s Academic Program for Excellence.APEX, a seven-week summer program, is one recruitment tool which is attractive to potential minority students. The summer classes and early orientation to the campus and community are offered at no charge to incoming freshmen minorities at Iowa State. Participation in multicultural learning communities accompanies the program and continues into the school year.Diversity was not the only issue at hand for the ISU recruitment staff. These soon-to-be high school graduates are also among the top scholars in the country.Tom Becker, enrollment services adviser, said every student at Preview Day would be a welcome addition to the ISU community.”Many of these students have full ride offers at several other schools,” he said. “Hopefully we’ve attracted these kids, some of the best students in the country, to Iowa State.”From breakfast at 8 a.m. until dinner at 5 p.m., students were busy with student panels, tours and meetings.By 5 p.m., a few heads were bobbing in the crowd, tired from a long day.”We want to make sure [prospective students] see as much of ISU as they can while they are here,” Becker said. “Students have always preferred seeing more to seeing less.”At dinner, the high school students had their first opportunity to interact with current ISU students. Katrice Woods, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies and organizer of Preview Day, said students took the opportunity to loosen up.”Students who hadn’t asked many questions in the large group meetings started to talk more in the more personal setting,” she said. “They got a lot out of talking to the current students.”Joseph Day, a visiting National Achievement Scholar from Detroit, Mich., came to give Iowa State a chance. He said the full ride offer intrigued him, and his family has prepared him for going to college in a new environment.”I was raised knowing that the rest of the world wasn’t gonna be like Detroit,” he said.While his high school is predominantly black, Day said he is not bothered by any lack of diversity at Iowa State.Bruning said she came away from the weekend tired and satisfied. She said most of the students left strongly considering Iowa State for college.”We made some friends this weekend, and though not many have made a final decision, they told me they would keep in touch,” she said.