WASHINGTON -- For Monica DiLeo, a senior at Cheshire High School, the highlight of her week in Washington was meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House.

DiLeo, one of 104 students selected for the United States Senate Youth Program, met with the president on Wednesday and had her photo taken with him and the other student delegates in the East Room of the White House.

"I worked in his 2008 presidential campaign and was among the thousands who saw him speak in Hartford,'' DiLeo said in an interview. "But I freaked out to see him in the White House. It was incredible.''

DiLeo has been active in various high school Democratic Party groups in Connecticut. She said she plans on majoring in chemistry in college, then attending medical school.

The 104 high school students -- two from each state, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense schools -- visited Washington for a weeklong intensive study of their government.

The other Connecticut delegate, Abdul-Razak Mohammed Zachariah, a junior at West Haven High School, said he was impressed by the other delegates. "All of them are so different -- a lot of states are very different than Connecticut -- but we all worked great together,'' Zachariah said.

His career goal is electrical engineering.

The delegates also met with Chief Justice John Roberts, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, British Ambassador Sir Peter Westmacott, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., senators and House members and Brian Lamb, CEO of C-SPAN.

This week marked the program's 50th anniversary. Just as DiLeo, Zachariah and the other delegates met with Obama, the first class of delegates in 1962 met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House.

The United States Senate Youth Program is funded and administered by the Hearst Foundation. The program's more than 5,000 alumni include Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., state legislators, judges, soldiers, and ambassadors.

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Ct. students savor week in nation's capital