The spring-break tans at Washington and Lee University are not quite so common this year. Budding politicos preparing for this weekend's Mock Convention skipped the beaches, staying in town to phone hundreds of county Republican leaders in states large and small.

Megan Fernstrum, a senior bound for Wall Street after graduation, collected the home telephone numbers of every Republican district chairman in Michigan as she scrambled to forecast the Presidential nominating contest. "We even ran scenarios on what if Bob Dole dies," she said.

Today, Miss Fernstrum and the 49 other mock state chairmen made the call as 1,600 student delegates jammed the gym in a sea of bow ties, state flags, and volleys of "Go, Pat, go!" and "No, Pat, no!"

Every four years, tracking polls and delegate counts take over at this white-columned haven in the Great Valley of Virginia, as students stage a nominating convention for the party out of power, trying to predict the party's actual nominee.

This year's extravaganza, which began on Friday and ended today, came complete with computerized vote tabulation, live C-Span coverage and platform debates. On a campus where tradition is hallowed, "Mock Con," as it is known, sits in a trinity with the honor code and the tradition of speaking to strangers. Since 1948, the students have picked wrong just once, choosing Senator Edward M. Kennedy over George McGovern in 1972.

"We have our whole Washington and Lee legacy on our shoulders," said Kelley Chapoton, 20, a sophomore who is the convention's chairwoman for the central region. This week, parents flew in and the town of 5,000 decked out. The front windows of a local sportswear shop displayed T-shirts designed by each state delegation. South Dakota's credo: "Drink. Smoke. Vote."

This weekend's headliner, Speaker Newt Gingrich, strode on stage to the music "Eye of the Tiger."

In preparing for the convention, the students were thrown by the early primaries. Bob Ross, a senior and the convention's political chairman, fretted that his dry runs had underestimated Patrick J. Buchanan.

By convention eve, Mr. Ross had pared his scenarios from the 20 he started with in the fall to 4 and, finally, to 3. "We don't have a Lamar Alexander scenario anymore," he said. In the end, Mr. Ross and his lieutenants decided on their first ballot that Senator Bob Dole of Kansas would clinch the nomination.

In the roll call, several states deferred their votes so Mr. Dole could be put over the top by his home state of Kansas.

On a scratchy cellular telephone hookup from Maine, Mr. Dole told the convention, "I accept the nomination, and I appreciate it very much."