As I walked into the ballroom of the DoubleTree Hotel in Somerset, NJ, I thought to myself, Is this all there is? Surely this dimly lit room, with its tacky maroon-and-cream geometric-print carpeting and a paltry expanse of parquet flooring for a stage could not have been the competition sphere that my classmates had talked up for months. Surely these three disinterested-looking middle-aged men and women sitting in front of that parquet floor could not…