March Madness

  • Sweet Diggity Dawg 2008: Kayleen Hannaway » With over 334,043 votes cast by 212,655 students in 106 countries, March Madness 2008 has come to a close. The winner of Zinch's first annual Sweet Diggity Dawg competition (and a $20,000 scholarship for college) is Kayleen Hannaway, a senior...
  • Zinch Gets a Shout-out on The Today Show » Yesterday MSNBC's Today Show aired a segment called "What Works and What Doesn't." What's the smart way for students to get into the college of their choice? Admissions authorities Terry Knaus of Indiana University and Martha Merrill of Connecticut College...
  • A Little More on the Final Four » Congrats to Sunny, Kayleen, Phuong, and Jessica (Hye Jin)! Each have done a tremendous job, as have many others, attracting votes for the Sweet Diggity Dawg Scholarship. We are now drawing close to awarding the $20,000, and excitement is rising....
  • Making Waves » The eight remaining students have attracted a total of 50,742 votes before entering this round. That's a lot of phone calls, emails and networking! Several parents have described to us how their phones are ringing off the hook; family and...
  • Elite 8: Almost there... » WOW. Everyone rocked out the vote this round. You guys all have some heavy supporters. As we see the competition get closer to the end, everyone is starting to bring their A game. We’re down to the elite 8 now,...
  • Scholarships and Free Money, continued. » Folks, March Madness is upon us. As some of the most talented students in the country battle it out through the next three rounds, we've been getting a lot of questions about new zinch scholarships, next years sweet-diggity-dawg award, and...
  • A big weekend » Alright my sweet 16 peoples. It is the real deal and it's getting intense. Some of you are off to big leads and some have some tight match ups once again. All i can say is this weekend will be...
  • How Sweet It Is! » Votes have been tallied, the Zinch Sweet 16 have emerged and the new matchups will be posted at 3pm EST today. First, a few items of business: - Please take note of all dates for the remaining rounds (scroll down...
  • Style and Grace » The first round was filled with excitement and plenty of down-to-the-wire hustle. I am a real fan of the underdogs (who's not, right?). Brings to mind a short, skinny Canadian that led #15 seed Santa Clara University to an upset...
  • Round 2: I Challenge You » Wow. It’s down to 32. Round 1 was some crazy competition, Cinderella upsets, underdogs moving on and a number 1 seed putting the smack down with 4200+ votes. That was crazy. We’re sad to see 32 of you go. You...
  • You Are in the Right Bracket » Quick note- March Madness has regional brackets (N,S,E,W) with a mix of students from all over the country. Just because you were in East #1 in the semis does NOT mean you will be in the East bracket for the...
  • Videos are welcome. » Finalists! If you want us to post one of your videos on your matchup page, send them to us at marchmadness@zinch.com ! I know a bunch of you have already done videos....but let us know if you want us to...
  • YouTube and Throwing Cake » Several of you are plugging yourselves on Youtube. This is a great way to broadcast your message/plea for the scholarship, so nice work, especially those of you who've never used YouTube before. In all this, I'd like to remind everyone...
  • 64 students chosen. Let the games begin.... » The 64 finalists have been chosen. Be sure to check out the brackets to vote. Also in the news. For the semifinalists who didn't make it: we are giving away $1k to one of you in the new Biggest Loser...
  • The Field of 64 » Zinchers…Tomorrow the tournament begins. 44 of you know that you are in. 17 of you will be chosen by the selection committee. The last 3 will come from the Cinderella 3. As I blog, the pizzas are in the offices,...
  • What Does It Take to Win? » Since its inception in 1939, the NCAA Basketball Tournament has had its share of big wins, upsets, and underdogs. The tournament is made up of conference champions from each Division 1 conference and then from at-large bids selected by the...
  • 3 Automatically in the Tourney » Automatic. You make Cinderella 3 and your are in the tourney. Seriously, everyone out there, be it a new member to Zinch or existing, semi-finalist or not, you are 50 friends away from possibly winning $20K. No one is blowing...
  • One day left. » Tomorrow morning the regionals officially end! One day. That's still plenty of time to make a splash in your high school and in your community. Again, we need help choosing 17 people to make it into the final 64. The...
  • Oh dear....now what? » Blah blah blah...these guys are nerds. We are trying to help kids go to college and they are still hatin' on us. Boo. People should call their phone number and tell 'em to keep their shirt on, sit down,...
  • Facebook. A common denominator among those leading » We've spoken with a handful of our leading contestants to try and get some ideas and suggestions to help the rest of the field get votes. Yes, we get a lot of the normal (yet still very effective) methods like...
  • Kirk Vaclavik...campaigning the middle schoolers » Some more Youtube sweetness from Kirk Vaclavik (South #5). He brought one of his entire classes to campaign to a bunch of middle schoolers and told everyone there to vote for him and passed out flyers. That's what he did....
  • Some Youtube noise.... » Anna Vignet from West #2. Nice work. Tight youtube video. It's a tight race in her region and with goods like this....she's got a fine chance at moving on. Remember folks....there are only 44 people coming out of these regionals...
  • Digg it. » Yes. Digg it. Let random internet users from all over the world know about March Madness....
  • This is what i'm talking about... » Whitney Young from East #3....nice work. She was able to get some nice press in her local paper. Watch out everyone...she's gonna make a run. This is the kinda thing that leads people to victory. Everyone should be pushing...
  • March Madness: Why, oh why? » This is all about an equal playing field. I just fielded another phone call from a mother who wanted to know why some votes were lost. WE ARE NOT DELETING VOTES. We are making the votes fair. I know it...
  • Everyone is on an equal playing field. » Hey guys....I just wanted to make sure everyone knew about the new rule. Each contestant can only get 1 vote from a particular IP address (location). So this morning...we wacked all votes (except 1 vote) that came from any specific...
  • Site might be a little slow.... » ...Cuz there are a TON of people getting on right now. I just wanted to warn you guys. Be patient with it. -Mick...
  • 1 vote per IP address. » This by far is the most common question we've been getting today... Why were a bunch of my votes removed this morning? Because we were seeing that a lot of students were getting a lot of votes from the same...
  • Dear refreshers, bug is fixed. » There were a bunch of people who were just clicking "refresh" after they voted for themselves and it gave them another vote. They would keep clicking it and clicking it and clicking it.....and it gave them more and more votes...
  • Cheaters aren't welcome here. » Update: It's pretty much impossible to cheat now that we've created the 1 vote per IP address rule. Read the official rules for more info.March Madness has officially begun. Everyone and anyone can vote. If you are registered on Zinch,...
  • Expressing condolences... » One of our March Madness semifinalists, Brady Schach from West Burlington High School (West Burlington, Iowa), will not be competing in this year's Sweet Diggity Dawg competition. Yesterday morning, two of his high school classmates got in a terrible car...
  • $20k Semifinalists announced. » It's official. The semifinalists have been announced. Who will be crowned 2008 Zinch Sweet Diggity Dawg? You decide. Next week voting begins. March Madness Zinch style. It's gonna be fun. In light of that, here's a Friday funny. This month...
  • Sweet Diggity Dawg: March Madness is coming » I’m talking about $20,000 dollars. Who wants this scholarship? The madness. Who wants free money to pay for their education? Yeah, we know you all do, but this is tough. So many great students to choose from. Seriously. We’ve gotten...