Colleges Turn Athletic Success into Application Bo

[TyBull]

Colleges Turn Athletic Success into Application Boom

by David Hirning

When it comes to athletics, the University of Florida is hot stuff these days. The Gators captured their second straight NCAA basketball championship on Monday night, adding the trophy to a shelf that also features the 2006 college football title.

Can it be a coincidence, then, that applications to the school are up 9 percent since the Gators won their first basketball crown? According to Zena Evans, admissions director at the university, her office has received more than 25,000 applications in the last year, the most the school has received in "quite some time."

Does athletic success really translate into more and better applicants to a college? Can a university turn a top ranking in Sports Illustrated into a lofty rating in U.S.News & World Report? Well, yes and no. As the following stories show, athletic glory can give a school a burst of good publicity, but in the long term it is academic excellence that matters to most students (and employers).

Winning formula

No one knows if there have been any formal studies about this phenomenon, but the college officials I talked to acknowledged that there may be something to this theory.

"We don't have any empirical evidence showing that athletic success leads to an increase in applicants," says Evans. "But any type of national exposure such as championships can have a positive impact on applicants. Sports tend to get more publicity than other types of events because they cut across a variety of different parts of society."

Evans also says that her staff has been forced to put in some long hours in the past year. That could make them one of the few groups at Florida that isn't completely happy with all the recent success.

Cinderella story

At the opposite end of the spectrum from Florida is George Mason University, a school of about 29,000 students located in Fairfax, Virginia. A year ago, most people outside the area probably knew little about the school or hadn't even heard of it. As for sports, George Mason was about as far from an athletic powerhouse as you could get.

All that changed on March 26, 2006, when the school's basketball team beat the University of Connecticut to reach the Final Four. Suddenly, everyone was talking about the Patriots, a huge underdog and great story. The national media and millions of college basketball fans clamored for details. Everyone wanted to know, Exactly where and what is George Mason?

Although the team didn't win the national title--losing to Florida in the semifinals--it created a flood of good publicity for the school. In particular, head coach Jim Larranaga became a tireless ambassador for George Mason, talking up the university at every opportunity.

"I owe a big debt to Coach Larranaga," laughs Andrew Flagel, the dean of admissions at George Mason. "The Final Four brought our school an incredible amount of publicity, which gave us more name recognition with potential students. It also gave our students a lot of pride and excitement." Flagel says applications have gone up a whopping 24 percent in the year since the basketball team's magical run.

The Flutie Effect

Flagel and several other admissions directors around the country call such a publicity windfall from sports "the Flutie Effect." This refers to the surge in attention that Boston College received in 1984, when the school's football team pulled off a miraculous comeback in a nationally televised game against the University of Miami. Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie went on to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy, and suddenly the college was the talk of the country.

Although Boston College received a big boost in applications from all the hype, some of the same officials noted that the following year the number of applications went right back down again.

"The Flutie Effect is actually kind of a myth," says David L. Warren, the president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and a self-professed sports fan. "It's often just a one-year bump in applications, and it also doesn't increase the quality of the applicant pool. Ultimately, it doesn't change the profile of the institution."

Warren admits that some schools can sustain their increased popularity if their sports team stays at a high level and continues to generate publicity. He cited Gonzaga University, a small Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington, that saw its men's basketball team rocket to prominence in the late 1990s. "Gonzaga's president has done a great job of using the basketball success to raise his school's visibility," Warren says. He also notes that the corresponding big jump in revenue--both from the team itself and from increased alumni giving--allowed Gonzaga to build a swanky new on-campus arena.

The rise of the Blue Devils

Another notable exception to the Flutie Effect occurred two decades ago at Duke University. Duke, located in Durham, North Carolina, was a well-known regional school at the time but lacked national name recognition. Then its basketball team, under young coach Mike Krzyzewski, made it to the NCAA Final Four six times from 1986 to 1992, including two consecutive national titles. Suddenly the Duke name was all over the national media, and high school students everywhere took notice.

"We've looked at this, and there does seem to be a related pattern between the rise of the basketball program and increasing admissions in the late 1980s," says Duke director of admissions Christoph Guttentag. "It definitely increased our visibility. Now when we go to high schools in North Dakota or Nevada or wherever, the athletic reputation is part of what people know about us."

At least one high school guidance counselor has noticed the same thing, citing Duke in particular. "I think the whole March Madness thing has an effect on how students learn about different schools," says John Vandermolen, a counselor at a high school in Bellevue, Washington. "The schools in the tournament get so much publicity that it raises their profile with students."

But Vandermolen and many of the admissions directors also say that athletic success can only do so much. It may draw attention to the school, but it doesn't make it better academically, which is the main factor that students look at when choosing a college. In other words, it can get a school into the conversation, but it doesn't seal the deal.

For confirmation of this, we may want to check back with George Mason University in a few years. This season the basketball team fell one win short of returning to the NCAA tournament. The clock may have struck midnight for this Cinderella story, but it remains to be seen if the same can be said for the school's future applicant pools.

About the Author

David Hirning is a freelance writer specializing in educational issues. He worked for 15 years as a journalist and as an editor for Encarta Encyclopedia.