During their parent-free trip, students role-play political situations, attend workshops, hear speakers and sightsee, and it culminates in a dinner and dance at a local hotel. For the Washington gatherings, “scholars” (as conference-goers are called) bunk at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center, a brick Georgian flanked by a dining hall and meeting rooms, just outside the city. In fact, the conferences, like many on offer, manage to attract engaged students from around the country. Instead of coming right out and saying, ‘We organize these wonderful trips to Washington, and you can meet all these other kids who are interested in government and motivated,’ they play up the honor angle. “I like to build my kids up, but on real accomplishments,” she says. It solicits recommendations from teachers and alumni of previous conferences, and it culls names from mailing lists, for which the council paid $263,000 in 2006 alone, according to its last filing with the Internal Revenue Service, before it gave up its nonprofit status. The company that organized the conference, a direct-mail powerhouse called the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, runs an alphabet soup of such conferences that it says are attended by 50,000 students a year. Still, Emily’s mother, Philippa, received an electronic elbow in the ribs every few days: more than a dozen e-mail messages from the group’s managing director of education, reminding her of enrollment deadlines and offering testimonials from participants and fund-raising tips. The Whartons did not respond to the invitation. “It makes you feel very unique and gifted,” she says.

Wharton, a junior at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, N.Y., tingled with pride on reading it.

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