So ambassadors are separate from class officers, it's something we applied for early in first year, when I applied we just had to write a couple paragraph-long essays but this year we held interviews. The past couple years there have been 10 ambassadors from each class, but this year they took all 13 first years who applied since they were all good! The main thing ambassadors do is give tours to prospective students, visiting alumni/donors, school groups, etc. throughout the year. Most tours during the semester are over the noon lunch hour, and we can sign up for as many as we're comfortable fitting into our schedule. The other big thing we do is help out with interview weekends, we help check people in, chat with applicants while they're waiting for their interviews, take people to their interview room and back, give tours throughout the day, etc. Then there are some other random events we help out with during the year, like Open House, or helping with the Dean's box during football games and mingling with alumni there. It's not a big time commitment at all, the main times we need people are the interview weekends. It pays $8/hr, so that's a little perk, but definitely nothing significant since a lot of weeks I don't give any tours or anything.
There aren't really any formal opportunities to meet other accepted students before orientation, but there's a Facebook group set up for each class, so a lot of people find roommates by posting on there, or there's a housing classifieds page through the school.
