National College Comedy Festival at Skidmore Charlie Samuels for The New York Times The Ad-Libs, an improv group at Skidmore. THE campus apartment shared by the Skidmore College students Lex Curry, 21, and Ruth Morrison, 21, has been the scene of chaos for the past few months, and not in typical party-recuperate-party fashion. The living room has morphed into an ad hoc headquarters, littered with paperwork and laptops. With urgent logistical matters to sort out, Ms. Curry and Ms. Morrison's bedroom privacy has evaporated. Scott Galante, 22, who lives down the hall, drops by constantly to talk scheduling. Ms. Morrison calls this ComFest Fortress, and said, "Hangout time turns into meetings, and meetings always end in hangout time." The producers of this year's ComFest at Skidmore College are, from right to left, Scott Galante, Ruth Morrison and Lex Curry. These three, all seniors, are producing this year's National College Comedy Festival, ComFest for short. The festival, next Saturday and Sunday at Skidmore, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., showcases improv and sketch groups from colleges across the country. Since 1990 ComFest has helped cultivate a legion of comedy creators and actors whose names populate the credits of television shows like "The Office" and "Community" and films like "Our Idiot Brother." For many participants the weekend is a turning point, a heady confirmation that, yes, this is what they want to do with their lives. What's more, they might actually have a shot at it. "In college the risks and rewards are in this perfect-imperfect balance," said Adam Lustick, of the sketch group Harvard Sailing Team, whose members met at New York University. The stakes are not that high. At Skidmore you feel like you can do anything, and I tried to hold onto that ethos when the real world started to creep in. Harvard Sailing Team was already a professional troupe when it performed at ComFest, but like many young groups it gained early exposure and experience by participating in the festival. Old programs are littered with household names and up-and-comers. Derrick Comedy, which formed at N.Y.U. and spawned the actors Donald Glover and D C Pierson, performed at ComFest. So did the Manhattan sketch stalwart Bleak! Comedy, as well as Michael Showalter, Justin Long and the actress Jessica St. Clair, who stars in NBC's coming sitcom "Best Friends Forever." These performers - along with aspiring writers and producers - spent a weekend at Skidmore sitting through panels and performances by a dozen or so groups like theirs along with a professional headliner. The festival is part comedy-nerd symposium, part comedy gantlet. Hammerkatz, from N.Y.U., and receSs, from George Washington University, are revered regulars, but the home-field advantage belongs to two Skidmore troupes: Skidomedy and the Ad-Libs, who Jane Clausen, a former ComFest producer, said, "are looked at on campus like a frat or a football team." Competition may not be as overt at ComFest as on the gridiron, but it exists. "During the opening party everyone was doing bits, trying to see whose were better," said the actor Jason Mantzoukas, who will be seen in Sacha Baron Cohen's movie "The Dictator." We just wanted to destroy. Mr. Mantzoukas came to ComFest with the Middlebury College improv group Otter Nonsense Players in the late 1990s. His fellow Otter, the producer Rodney Rothman ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall"), came away stung. "We'd do shows for 500 people at Middlebury," he said. And they loved us unconditionally. When we saw other groups at Skidmore, we realized we weren't as funny as we thought we were. Others leave with the sense that they have been selling themselves short. It's at Skidmore that many get their first taste of validation. "For some groups, it's a huge deal that more than a hundred people are coming to see them," Ms. Curry said. The student audience that attends ComFest wields real power over performers" paths. The actor T. J. Miller recalled performing at Skidmore at a time, he said, when he felt he was struggling. He drew huge laughs, a reaction that changed everything. "It was what I needed to believe that I was good enough to go to Chicago and, eventually, to Los Angeles," Mr. Miller said in an e-mail. He would go on to perform at Second City before appearing in "Cloverfield" and "Our Idiot Brother." He is now shooting a pilot for Fox.